THE WAR LORDS 



BY THE SAME 
AUTHOR 

PROPHETS 
PRIESTS 
AND KINGS 



PILLARS OF 
SOCIETY 



THE WAR LORDS 



BY 



A. G. GARDINER 




WITH 
16 PORTRAITS 



LONDON AND TORONTO 

J. M. DENT & SONS LIMITED 
NEW YORK: E. P. DUnON ^ CO. 
1915 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/warlords01gard 



PREFACE TO LIBRARY EDITION 

In issuing the present edition of The War Lords it is 
necessary to point out that the book was written during 
the first nine months of the war and under the varying 
influence of the events that filled that period. Much 
has happened since then to qualify the view of those 
events — the great German advance into Russia, for 
example, the course of events in the Dardanelles, the 
intervention of Bulgaria on the side of the enemy, the 
second fall of Venizelos, the supersession of Sir Ian Hamil- 
ton, the heated controversy about conscription, etc. 
But no attempt has been made to alter the focus in 
accordance with these later happenings. In so far as 
the book deals with events it deals with them in a con- 
temporary and not an historic sense, and it has been 
thought best not to alter that contemporary impression 
even though it may, in some respects, be no longer just. 
Moreover, events are only incidental to the main purpose 
of the book which is an attempt to give an estimate of 
the personal forces engaged in the struggle, and of their 
influence upon the origins, issues, and conduct of the 
war. Whatever the worth of that estimate, it has not 
been seriously affected by subsequent events. Except 
for a few minor alterations, therefore, the book appears 
now in its original form. 

Hampstead, October 1915. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



1. The Kaiser — And the Origins of the War . . i 

2. King Albert — And the Tragedy of Belgium . . 34 

3. General Joffre — ^And the Spirit of France . . 49 

4. The Asquith Cabinets — And the Spirit of England . 62 

5. The Emperor Francis Joseph — And the Spirit of 

Serbia ........ 107 

6. The Grand Duke Nicholas — And the Tragedy of 

Poland 122 

7. General Botha — And the Spirit of the Empire . 141 

8. King Victor Emmanuel — And the Spirit of Italy . 157 

9. M. Venizelos 168 

ID. King Gustav . . . . . . . 178 

11. Marshal VON Hindenburg — And German Generalship 190 

12. King Nicholas of Montenegro .... 200 

13. The Crown Prince of Prussia .... 208 

14. King Ferdinand 219 

15. General von Bernhardt — And the Spirit of Germany 235 

16. Sir John French — ^And British Generalship . . 254 

17. Sir John Jellicoe 274 

18. Karl Liebknecht — ^And the German Democracy . 282 

19. President Wilson — ^And the Spirit of America . 296 

20. Lord Fisher — ^And the Spirit of the Navy . . 305 



VII 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



By CLIVE GARDINER 

The Kaiser 

Albert, King of the Belgians 

General Joffre 

h. h. asquith . 

Lord Kitchener 

Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria 
Hungary 

The Grand Duke Nicholas 

General Botha , 

M. Venizelos 

General von Hindenburg 

The Crown Prince of Prussia 

(From the photograph of Stanley's Press Agency.) 

Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria 

General von Bernhardi . 

Sir John French 

Sir John Jellicoe 

Lord Fisher 



Frontispiece ^ 
Facing page 34 
49 "^ 

80 

no ^ 
129 ^ 
144 ^ 
177 - 
192 
209 

224 - 
241 
256 
274 ' 
305 



VUl 



THE WAR LORDS 

THE KAISER 

AND THE ORIGINS OF THE WAR 

I. DIVINE RIGHT 

It is said, on such, high authority that the statement is 
entitled to respect, that on the fatal Saturday when he 
signed the declaration of war against Russia the Kaiser, 
having written his signature, threw the pen across the 
table and said to the triumphant soldiers around him, 
" Gentlemen, you will live to regret this." And those 
who saw the council break up have described how, as he 
emerged, Count von Moltke made to certain colleagues 
outside a sign with seven figures indicating the word 
" WiUielm." The long struggle was over and the soldiers 
had dragged their victim over the precipice. That is 
the general reading of events. But the time has not yet 
come to ascertain with any clearness the part which the 
Kaiser played in the drama that preceded the war. Was 
the Norwegian cruise which was taken after the Serajevo 
murders a blind intended to lull the suspicions of the 
outside world, or was it a desperate attempt to escape 
from the net that the military party had woven around 
him? What was his action in the interval and what 
was the precise significance of that message from Sir H. 
Rumbold to Sir E. Grey, published in the White Paper, 
referring to the Kaiser's sudden return from Norway? 
Why was the Berlin Foreign Office alarmed by that 



2 THE WAR LORDS 

return ? On this point there is an incident, told in well- 
informed circles, that is illuminating. When the Crown 
Prince heard of the return from Norway he said to one 
of the miHtary cabal, " WiUiam is back; but he is too 
late." It is the opinion of those in this country most 
intimate with the inner history of the diplomatic struggle 
that culminated in the war that both the Kaiser and 
his chancellor wanted peace, but that the accession of 
the Crown Prince to the war party made their resistance 
ineifectual. "Let us be just to Bethmann-HoUweg," 
said a distinguished Foreign Office representative when 
the conduct of the chancellor was being criticised. " You 
only see his failure. We have seen when he has not 
failed — when he has fought for peace and won. He 
fought for peace this time, but lost." And so with the 
Kaiser. The indictment that history will make against 
him will not be that he wanted war, but that his policy 
was fatal to the cause of peace. For years he had been 
increasingly unpopular with the miHtary faction, who 
regarded him as a coward and as the obstacle to the war 
which was their dream. There is negative evidence in 
the Yellow Book that up to August of 191 3 he was con- 
sidered by the French Foreign Office to be an influence 
for peace. The record there of the memorable interview 
of the Kaiser and Von Moltke with King Albert com- 
ments on the change which was apparent in the attitude 
of the Kaiser. Hitherto he had commanded the con- 
fidence of the French Ambassador at Berlin ; now it was 
clear that he was weakening in his resistance to the 
military conspiracy. 

But even later the battle for the Kaiser was in doubt. 
Whatever may be said of Herr Ballin's actions since the 
war began, it will not be denied that he, Hke the com- 
mercial class generally, was anxious for peace, if not on 
any lofty ground then on the low ground of self-interest. 



THE KAISER 3 

He had everything to lose and nothing to gain by war. 
Moreover, he knew perhaps better than any one else in 
Germany the temper of this country, for it was in the 
city of London that he had learned the lessons that en- 
abled him to build up the great mercantile marine of 
Germany, and but for an accident of circumstance he 
might have been the Napoleon of the shipping trade in 
England instead of in Germany. Outside the official 
circle he is the most intimate friend of the Kaiser, and 
he may be assumed to have been as familiar as any one 
with the workings of his mind at this critical time. In 
November 191 3 Herr Ballin was asked by an English 
friend what the Kaiser really meant — was it war or 
peace ? " I really cannot say," was his reply. " It is 
like this. We are shouting ' Peace ' into one ear and 
the soldiers are shouting ' War ' into the other ear. And 
which shout will prevail it is impossible to say." 

The difficulty was increased by his incalculable 
character. The French have a saying about a certain 
type of man that he has " a devil in the body." That 
saying is singularly applicable to the Kaiser. He is 
afflicted with the colossal egoism of one who feels that 
the whole universe is revolving round his godlike person- 
ality. His temperament is that of the stage, and wher- 
ever he moves the limelight follows him. The impression 
he creates in personal contact is one of enormous energy 
and mental alertness, of powers wayward and uncertain, 
but fused with a spark of genius, of a temperament of 
high nervous force bordering on disease. The move- 
ments of his mind are sudden and shattering, governed 
by mood and by an autocratic impulse that baffles 
calculation. He is responsive to every emotional appeal 
and his laughter is as careless as a boy's, but it is laughter 
that you cannot trust, for it may change to lightning at 
a word. The spur of the moment drives him, and the 



4 THE WAR LORDS 

telegram form is the symbol of his thought. Nothing 
illustrates this impatience and subjection to impulse 
more than the circumstance of the famous Kruger tele- 
gram, which was launched at this country in a spasm of 
anger with the late Lord Salisbury. " The world " (if 
I may quote from something I wrote of the Kaiser after 
meeting him some ten years ago) " distrusts the artistic 
temperament in affairs. It prefers the stolid man who 
thinks slowly and securely and acts with deliberation. 
It likes a man whose mental processes it can follow and 
understand, a man of the type of the late Duke of Devon- 
shire, solid, honest, and not the least bit clever. There 
is the root of the disquiet with which the Kaiser has been 
regarded for twenty years. He is a man of moods and 
impulses, an artist to his finger tips, astonishingly ver- 
satile, restless, and unnerving. He keeps his audience 
in a state of tense expectation. Any moment, it feels, 
a spark from this incandescent personality may drop 
into the powder magazine." 

But if his personality made his actions incalculable, 
his political doctrine gave them a definite and fatal 
direction. What that doctrine is we have had abundant 
evidence from his own lips, for there has been no more 
talkative monarch in our own or any time. During the 
quarter of a century that he has reigned he has delivered 
more than a thousand public or semi-public speeches, 
and as one reads them in the collected form in the 
volume edited by Mr. Christian Gauss, the mind of the 
Kaiser is revealed with extraordinary clearness and 
definition. It is said that words are made to conceal 
thought. That may be true. But they do not conceal 
personality, and the cumulative effect of these speeches 
has the quality of a piece of self-portraiture that is final 
and convincing. It may not shed light upon whether 
the Kaiser wanted the war or was forced into it by the 



THE KAISER 5 

military party and the Crown Prince. But as one reads 
and sees the real Kaiser shaping himself one feels that, 
whether he wanted it or not, he was the artificer of war. 
In all our complexities there is a central core which is 
the real man. It may be difficult to discover it, but it 
is always there and it is always ultimately operative. 
" Truth," said Ruskin, " is polygonal. I never feel sure 
that I have got it until I have contradicted myself five 
or six times." And the contradictions of the Kaiser's 
personality are many more than five or six. And yet 
in these speeches they are resolved into a unity so simple 
and decisive that it seems strange that his versatility 
should have obscured the central drift of his character 
and policy. War was not, perhaps, his deliberate pur- 
pose, but it was his destiny. 

It was implicit in his doctrine. The keynote of that 
doctrine drums through his speeches as the note drummed 
in the head of Schumann in the days of his insanity. 
Indeed, it is so persistent, so extravagant, so unrelieved 
by any touch of humour, as to suggest insanity. That 
note is the divinity of his kingship. The world has 
travelled so far from the doctrine of divine right that 
it is not easy to conceive the mind in which it still lives 
as a reality. But in the mind of the Kaiser it is a reality 
that consumes everything else in its fierce fire. He 
believes that his house is the divinely appointed instru- 
ment of God made to lead the German nation to redeem 
the earth as absolutely as Moses was raised to lead the 
chosen people out of Egypt, " Then," he says at 
Miinster in 1907, " then the German people will be the 
rock of granite upon which our Lord God can build and 
complete his culture in the world." He sees the cloud 
by day and the pillar of fire by night. And out of the 
cloud the Almighty is speaking to him, William, His 
servant and confidant. 



6 THE WAR LORDS 

Hence the constant and familiar allusions to God. 
There is not a speech in which His name does not appear, 
and it is always employed with that note of familiarity 
which the confidential servant uses in speaking of the 
master who is even more friend and colleague than 
master. The claim of divine appointment is not held 
timidly or asserted vaguely. It is declared openly and 
defiantly. Thus at Konigsberg in 1910 he says: 

" And here my grandfather, again, by his OAAai right, set the Prussian 
crown upon his head, once more emphasising the fact that it was 
accorded him by the will of God alone and not by Parliament or by 
any assemblage of the people or by popular vote, and that he thus 
looked upon himself as the chosen instrument of Heaven and as such 
performed his duties as Regent and Sovereign." 

Even that cynical atheist, Frederick the Great, was the 
servant of God, for it was in reference to him that the 
Kaiser said: " And just as the great king was never left 
in the lurch by the old Ally, so the Fatherland and this 
beautiful province will always be near His heart." Here 
one sees that terrible absence of humour that is the real 
disease of the man. He has never laughed at himself. 
He has never seen himself, in Falstaif's phrase, " like 
a forked radish carved out of cheese-parings after sup- 
per." He is afflicted with a frightful gravity about 
himself and his house that is in itself a form of madness. 
" I regard my whole position," he tells the representa- 
tives of Brandenburg, " as given to me direct from 
Heaven and that I have been called by the Highest to 
do His work." Sometimes, indeed, even the Almighty 
is subordinated. " Suprema lex regis voluntas " he 
writes in the Golden Book of Munich. He takes nothing 
for granted, but declares his omnipotence on all occasions 
with a childish vanity. " My Church, of which I am 
summus episcopus,''^ he says in lecturing the office- 
bearers on their duties. And again, " There is only one 



THE KAISER 7 

master in this country. That am I. Who opposes me 
I shall crush to pieces." 

It would be a mistake to suppose from all this that 
his motive is ambition. His pride out-soars ambition. 
That quality is the attribute of ordinary humanity, and 
the Kaiser no more thinks of himself in the terms of 
ordinary humanity than you and I think of ourselves 
in the terms of the troglodyte. If you prick him he 
knows that he will bleed, and if you tickle him he knows 
that he will laugh. In this he is human, but in his 
mission he is divine. And that divinity cannot be 
delegated. Hence his repudiation of Bismarck. Hence, 
too, those constant references to William " the Great." 
The idea that it was Bismarck who was the creator of 
modern Germany was an insult to the divinity of the 
house of HohenzoUern. It was an insult to the Almighty. 
It must be corrected by raising his grandfather to the 
skies where old William, who was really a modest and 
sensible man and hated war, never sought to intrude. 
And so we have the constant insistence on William 
" the Great." 

This vision of himself as divine leads straight to other 
vital consequences. It governs his conception of the 
state and his relation to the people. Since he is the 
august instrument of the Almighty it follows that the 
government is upon his shoulders, and not the govern- 
ment alone but even opinion, taste, and religious belief. 
Hence his deliverances on art and music, literature and 
theology, his sermons and his moral discourses. They 
have all, together with their crude and shallow brilliancy, 
a Sinaitic seriousness as of one who does not speak as a 
man but as a god. In these things, the deification of 
himself is amusing. It is when we come to his attitude 
towards the State that it leads to blood and iron. He 
sees in democracy the spirit of rebellion against himself 



8 THE WAR LORDS 

and therefore against the Almighty. He is the law- 
giver of the Germans as Moses was the lawgiver of 
Israel, and these demands for liberty, this unrest of 
labour are the motions of people who are following 
strange gods and must be chastised with scorpions. 
What have they to do with the law, except obey it? 
Is not the government placed in his hands by God and 
will he not be faithful to the divine task imposed on 
him ? 

And so he lectures the strikers at Berlin or Breslau 
like an avenging angel, and denounces the socialists 
like a Property Defence League advocate. Thus : 

" For to me every Social Democrat is synonymous with an enemy 
of the realm and of the Fatherland. Should I, therefore, discover that 
Social Democratic tendencies become involved in the agitation and 
instigate unlawful opposition, I will step in sternly and ruthlessly and 
bring to bear all the power I possess — and it is great." (Berlin, 1889.) 

And again — this time to the working men of Breslau 
in 1902: 

" For years you and your brothers have allowed yourselves to be 
deluded by the agitators of the Socialists into thinking that if you do 
not belong to this party and acknowledge it no one pays any attention 
to you and that you will not be in a position to obtain, a hearing for 
your just interests in the amelioration of your condition. 

" That is a gross lie and a serious error. Instead of representing you 
directly, the agitators seek to stir you up against your employers, 
against the other classes, against the throne and against the church. 
. . . And to what end is this power used ? Not for furthering your 
welfare but for sowing hatred between the classes and for disseminat- 
ing cowardly slanders that respect nothing sacred ; and finally, they 
have outraged the Almighty Himself." 

From this absolutist attitude to the state there follows 
the fact that his sole reliance is on the army. He not 
only does not ask for the sanction of the people: he 
repudiates it. He is not a constitutional king, but the 



THE KAISER 9 

Supreme War Lord, and he governs not by consent but 
by the power of the sword. If his people are good he 
will be kind to them ; if they are disobedient he will flog 
them and shoot them. Throughout his speeches the 
glitter of the sword is as constant as the name of God. 
Indeed the two words are almost interchangeable. Even 
when he makes a gift to the great Minister whom he 
has discarded and outraged it takes the form of a sword, 
and he says : 

" I could find no better token than a sword, this noblest symbol of 
the Germans ; a symbol of that instrument which your Highness with 
my late grandfather helped to shape, to sharpen, and also to wield; 
the symbol of that great, powerful period of building whose mortar 
was blood and iron ; that weapon which is never dismayed and which 
when necessary, in the hands of kings and princes, will defend against 
internal foes that unity of the Fatherland which it had once conquered 
from the foes without." 

" Internal foes." Again and again that threat of the 
army against his own people if they are disobedient 
recurs like a refrain. It is to the army that he looks to 
preserve his throne and suppress the rebellious. In the 
first words he addressed to it — three days before he 
troubled to send a message to his people — he declared : 

" The absolutely inviolable dependence upon the War Lord (Kriegs- 
herr) is in the army, the inheritance of which descends from father to 
son, from generation to generation. ... So are we bound together — 
I and the Army — so are we bom for one another, and so shall we hold 
together indissolubly, whether, as God wills, we are to have peace or 
storm." 

The army is his own private inheritance. It is the 
sole pillar, as he says in another speech, upon which his 
empire rests. Now let us see what is his view of its 
functions. He is addressing the recruits to the Regiment 
of the Guard on their swearing in at Potsdam in 1891. 
Three renderings of the speech are on record. They do 



lo THE WAR LORDS 

not vary essentially, but I quote that taken from the 
Neisser Zeitung : 

"Recruits! You have now before the consecrated servant of the 
Lord, and before His altar sworn fealty to me. You are still too young 
to understand the true meaning of what has just been said; but be 
diligent now and follow the directions and instructions given you. 
You have sworn loyalty to me; that means, children of my guard, 
that you are now my soldiers; you have given yourselves up to me, 
body and soul ; there is for you but one enemy and that is my enemy. 
In view of the present Socialistic agitations it may come to pass that 
I shall command you to shoot your own relatives, brothers, yes, 
parents — which God forbid — but even then you must follow my 
command without a murmur." 

And now out of his own mouth we have got the full 
doctrine of kingship. It is stated over and over again, 
always with the same fearless directness and lucidity, 
for among his many gifts is a distinct skill in picturesque 
oratory. The doctrine is this: (i) he is Emperor and 
King by divine right, by the direct election of God; (2) 
the state is his family property, to be administered justly 
but with absolute freedom from interference, criticism, 
or attack; (3) the weapon of government is the sword 
of the army which is the private inheritance of his family, 
and the purpose of which is to smite down his internal 
enemies as well as his external enemies. 

The doctrine sounds like the gospel of the madhouse; 
but it is absolutely sincere, like so much that one hears 
in the madhouse. Nor is it an empty creed. On the 
contrary, it is the creed that has governed Germany and 
out of which the war came. For in order to make his 
gospel possible, even with the help of his army, he had 
to turn his people's eyes to other lands and to whet their 
appetites with the lust of conquest. The social reforms 
that Bismarck had introduced to promote Germany's 
military efficiency and incidentally to keep the people 
quiet had exhausted their influence. A new motif must 



THE KAISER ii 

be found or the old rebellious passion — the old demand 
for liberty within — which had been suppressed since 1 848 
would be irresistible. And so in his speeches we trace 
side by side with the gospel of divine right, the gospel 
of W eltmacht. Germany is to have " its place in the 
sun." The German Michel is to go forth in shining 
armour and with " mailed fist," carrying the culture of 
the Fatherland into the darkness without and adding 
to the glory of the house HohenzoUern and of their 
" powerful Ally, the old, good God {der alte, gute Gott) 
in heaven, who, ever since the time of the Great Elector 
and of the great king, has always been on our side." 
And seeing that W eltmacht is ultimately only another 
name for naval power, he starts the great naval policy 
and declares — ^with that aptness for the telling phrase 
that he always shows — that " our future lies upon the 
water " (Stettin, 1898). 

And so he keeps his people quiet, now flattering them 
with visions of " a German world empire and of a 
HohenzoUern world ruler " (Bremen, 1905), now brand- 
ishing his hereditary sword in the face of the insurgent 
Socialists. The undercurrent throughout is the thought 
of the internal menace to his absolute rule. In resisting 
that menace he was driven into courses that had only 
one goal. The alternative to democratic freedom at 
home was the policy of the high hand abroad, and 
though he did not desire war he was prepared to invite 
it with the external enemies of the state rather than with 
the internal enemies of his despotism. Surrender to the 
Socialists was an unthinkable humiliation. It was more. 
It was disloyalty to " the old, good God " who had been 
the family Ally so long. And so he sharpened his sword 
and drifted towards Niagara, and to-day he is not fight- 
ing the Socialists. They are fighting for him. They 
are falling in thousands and tens of thousands and 



12 THE WAR LORDS 

hundreds of thousands to exalt the house they hate and 
the man who has treated them as his personal enemies. 
It is the strangest irony in all the history of war. 

Perhaps the Kaiser is mad. Pride such as his is hardly 
consistent with sanity. But certainly the peoples of 
Europe will be mad if, after this frightful lesson, they 
do not make an end on the earth for ever of the doctrine 
of the divine right of kings. 



II. THE CURSE OF BISMARCK 

If we see in this denial of popular liberty and this 
assertion of absolutism, based on the power of the sword, 
the real clue to the war, we shall find the evil genius of 
Germany in the man whose centenary falls so fittingly 
in the midst of the catastrophe that marks the fulfil- 
ment of his policy. For without Bismarck the des- 
potism of the Kaiser would have been impossible. It 
is true that the Kaiser repudiated the old minister as 
ruthlessly as Henry V. repudiated Falstaff and sub- 
jected him to the grossest indignities. But that was 
because, like most kings, he hated the sense of obligation 
and because he would have " no rival near the throne." 
He would be king not in form but in fact. He would be 
absolute in war and in statecraft, and would have about 
him flunkeys to do his bidding, not men to dispute his 
judgment. And it is true also that the policy of the 
Kaiser departed very startlingly from that of the old 
chancellor who did not talk sounding bombast about 
Weltmacht, and who declared that the Balkans were not 
worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. But, 
nevertheless, the high-vaulting schemes of the Kaiser 
were the natural fruit of the Bismarckian tree, and the 
great adventure of to-day was latent in the policy of 
the iron chancellor. 



THE KAISER 13 

It was a coincidence for the curious that brought the 
great Prussian upon the stage at the moment that the 
great Corsican was leaving it. Ten days before that 
April I, 1 81 5, Napoleon had reached Paris from Elba, 
and three months later he met his final overthrow at 
Waterloo. His star went down never to rise again ; but 
in the north another star as blood-red was coming up 
.over the horizon. To-day that star, too, we hope is 
setting over those same fields of Flanders where Napo- 
leonism perished a hundred years ago. 

What are the thoughts of Germany as it celebrates 
the centenary of the man who fashioned it with blood 
and iron ? Will it see in this war the triumph of his 
policy, or will it see in it the failure of his successors to 
follow his astute diplomacy? It is a commonplace of 
contemporary criticism that Bismarck would not have 
suffered Germany to be encircled by enemies. He never 
under-estimated his possible foes, never cultivated a 
reckless vanity, always insured and reinsured himself 
against contingencies, above all, never swerved from 
his root maxim, " keep friends with Russia." That was 
the keynote of his policy, and the injunction which the 
old King, his master, uttered from his death-bed to his 
grandson, " Never lose touch with the Tsar," was only 
the echo of that policy. The friendship of England also 
was his constant aim, not because he loved England, for 
England like France was the home of that democratic 
spirit that he hated, but because his ambitions did not 
bring him into conflict with England, and he was not 
the man to make an enemy where he could make a 
friend. 

But all the same the war is the sequel to the work of 
Bismarck, and is true to the spirit of that remarkable 
man. In him Prussianism reached its highest expres- 
sion; but it did not reach the limits of its dream. Each 



14 THE WAR LORDS 

century since the eighteenth has seen the horizon of that 
dream widened, and though Bismarck himself had 
neither colonial nor naval ambitions the claim of Prussia 
to-day to " World Power " is only the expansion of that 
idea of dominion that he inherited from Frederick the 
Great. 

His relation to the events of to-day can best be under- 
stood by briefly recalling the facts of the Germany that 
he found and the Germany that he founded. When he 
was in his cradle a hundred years ago the German nation 
had just emerged from the nightmare of Napoleon. In 
a very real sense it was Napoleon who gave the Germans 
a national consciousness and paved the way for Bis- 
marck. It is true that, even after the overthrow of 
Napoleon, the German nation still lacked political unity. 
It was divided into multitudes of independent states 
and free cities; but the humiliation of the Napoleonic 
irruption had discovered the solidarity of sentiment 
that underlay all separatisms, and the teaching of Fichte, 
the songs of Korner, the educational fervour of Stein, 
and the military genius of Scharnhorst had given an 
impulse to unity that only awaited the man and the 
moment. 

The movement towards unity could only come from 
one of two sources — from the Habsburgs of Austria 
who had made themselves great by marriage, or the 
Hohenzollerns of Prussia who had made themselves great 
by the sword. Before Germany could be consolidated 
the rivalry of Austria and Prussia must be settled. 
Frederick in the eighteenth century had first challenged 
the supremacy of Austria and laid the foundations of 
the greatness of Prussia (that Slav wilderness which the 
knights of the Teutonic Order had wrested from the 
heathen in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). It 
is one of the ironies of history that it was with the help 



THE KAISER 15 

of the sea power of this country that Frederick won his 
treacherous duel with Maria Theresa of Austria. In 
those days we were prepared to ally ourselves with any 
power which would help to check the ambitions of 
France, and the King of Prussia was more popular in 
England than our own king. Even to-day the public- 
house sign of the " King of Prussia," with its cocked hat 
and pigtail, is a familiar reminder of the time when we 
were helping to make Prussia great. 

Out of the welter of the Napoleonic wars and the 
intrigues of the Vienna Congress, Prussia emerged with 
new territorial gains, among them those rich Rhinelands 
that became the source of its industrial greatness and 
strengthened its arm for its next adventure. The great 
end that Prussia had in view, the conquest of Germany, 
was now well in sight, but first Austria must be brushed 
aside. There came a momentary diversion with the 
revolutionary outbreak of 1848, which led to the Frank- 
fort Constitution and the pale semblance of German 
unity on the basis of free institutions. It collapsed, and 
no one rejoiced more than young Bismarck, with his 
hatred of democracy and his passion for the " Christian 
monarchy " of his ideal, embodied in the kingship of 
Prussia. 

His advent to power in 1862 was a portent. Parlia- 
ment had refused the king money for the reorganisation 
of the army, and the king, much against his will, called 
in this formidable man as chief minister to help him to 
overawe his people. His first speech as minister gave 
the keynote to that policy of brutal aggression for which 
Prussia has become synonymous. " The German ques- 
tion," he said, " cannot be settled by speeches or 
Parliamentary decrees, but only by blood and iron." 
For four years he ruled without a Budget and crushed 
the opposition under his iron heel, while he prepared 



i6 THE WAR LORDS 

his great scheme for making the Prussian monarchy 
master of Germany. 

He had marked Austria down for slaughter, and with 
diabolical cunning and treachery first involved her as 
an accomplice in the theft of Schleswig-Holstein, and 
then used that incident as a cause of quarrel. But he 
delayed his blow in 1 865 in order to insure himself by 
securing the neutrality of Italy and France. That done 
he launched his bolt and in six or seven weeks Austria 
was at his feet. But he would not allow the king to 
make any territorial annexation, for he wanted Austria 
as his friend in the next act of his drama. He had 
sought the neutrality of France to help him to overthrow 
Austria; now he needed the quiescence of Austria to 
help him to overthrow France. He knew that Napoleon 
HI. would not allow him to complete his conquest of 
Germany without a struggle, and for that struggle he 
now prepared. And Napoleon and his preposterous 
Foreign Minister, Grammont, made the task easy. 
Napoleon attempted to avert the storm by a scheme of 
mutual plunder. Benedetti, the French ambassador 
at Berlin, put before Bismarck a proposal by which 
Prussia should be allowed to incorporate the South 
German states in the new Northern Confederation, while 
France should be allowed to annex Belgium and Luxem- 
burg. Bismarck smiled. That was not his way of 
achieving German unity. He must not steal the German 
States with the help of France : he must give the German 
States a common quarrel with France and out of that 
quarrel bring them into his net. But he kept Benedetti's 
draft and duly published it in The Times in order to 
keep English opinion right at the outbreak of war. 

His opportunity came with the question of the 
Spanish succession; but the unwillingness of the king 
to engage in another war almost defeated his aims. 



THE KAISER 17 

Grammont, however, came to Bismarck's rescue. When 
William had yielded on the succession question, the 
ridiculous French minister sought to convert his diplo- 
matic victory into a rout. He demanded that the King 
of Prussia should undertake not to raise the question 
again. William did not want to fight, but neither did 
he want to be humiliated. He wrote the famous Ems 
telegram, and Bismarck, seizing his opportunity, doc- 
tored it in such a way as to make the war he desired 
unavoidable. And out of that war he emerged with his 
prize. At Versailles he brought the German Empire 
to birth and made the King of Prussia its master, and the 
Prussian spirit its dictator. 

The free German peoples had been welded at last, 
but they had lost their freedom in winning their unity. 
They had been conquered by the fierce knights of the 
Teutonic Order, and absorbed in a state which knew 
nothing of democracy or freedom and rested frankly 
on the army, and whose King was the Supreme War 
Lord of an ancient fighting caste. In a word, the current 
of German life instead of swelling the tide of liberty had 
been turned back into the channels of Caesarism. Ger- 
many, in becoming powerful, had become divorced from 
the movement of Western Europe, and the triumph of 
Bismarck's policy crushed every instinct of freedom in 
the dust. The Emperor reigned not by consent of his 
people, but in virtue of the army which he alone con- 
trolled. Parliamentary institutions were a jest, and the 
most powerful political party in the country — the Social 
Democrats — were openly reviled by the Kaiser as the 
enemies of the Fatherland. 

The maintenance of such a system in the heart of the 
modern world could only be secured by conquests and 
more conquests. If Prussia was to endure it must 
Prussianise not only Germany but Europe and the 



1 8 THE WAR LORDS 

world. And so, out of the triumpli of Bismarck, there 
came the new dream of sea power and world power and 
the preparation for an adventure more vast than that of 
Frederick or of Bismarck. And caught in the toils of 
the military machine, and dazzled by the sudden success 
which their genius for organisation had brought them, the 
people became obsessed by the theory of the super-race. 

They came to worship the machine of Might, and since 
they could not free themselves from its tyranny, com- 
promised by believing that they would do other people 
good by bringing them under its tyranny also. And 
with splendid self-deception they called the tyranny 
" Kultur." With their natural tendency to abstract 
thinking they were hypnotised by the idea of the state, 
and patriotism which to other peoples is an instinct 
and a warm-blooded passion became to them a cold 
philosophy, an arid creed, formulated by crabbed pro- 
fessors and learned in the schoolroom like a multiplica- 
tion table or a Greek verb. 

The triumph of Bismarck, in short, in imposing the 
chains of Prussianism on Germany led straight to the 
world catastrophe of to-day. He gave the German 
nation unity and power; but he denied it freedom, and 
in denying it freedom perverted its soul. Had his policy 
been less successful in a material sense, the impulse of 
the people towards internal liberty would have been 
more powerful and would ultimately have overthrown 
the militarist despotism. But Bismarck's imperialism 
was astonishingly successful, and democratic sentiment 
failing to overthrow the iron god of his creation was 
turned aside to grind the mills of its purpose. Unable 
to destroy the monster, the people fell under its enchant- 
ment. The war will lift the spell from them. It will 
smash the idol of blood and iron and release the spirit 
of Germany from the curse of Bismarck. 



THE KAISER 19 

III. THE kaiser's guilt 

It is stated by one who has seen him that the Kaiser 
has lost his air of bustHng activity, that his counten- 
ance is grave and careworn, and that his hair has turned 
almost white. We may receive this report, as we have 
learned to receive everything in these days, with reserve; 
but its probability can hardly be doubted. No one who 
has ever come in contact with the Kaiser can have failed 
to be impressed by his highly nervous, almost febrile 
temperament. He is one of those men whose voltage 
is always excessive. You feel that a day must come 
when the wire will fuse. And it must be remembered 
that he has lived on the crest of a pride that has never 
before known a check from man or circumstance. He 
has sailed all his days on a sea of glory, in an atmosphere 
of despotic power that brought no wholesome reminder 
that he is vulnerable like the rest of us and may be made 
a jest of fortune as easily as a clown. When the pride 
of such a man breaks under him he has no support left. 
His fall is proportioned to the extravagance of his claims. 
If he is not infallible, he is nothing. 

Now, at the end of nine months of war, the Kaiser 
is disillusioned. His house of mirrors is shattered and 
he has passed into a valley of humiliation more bitter 
than that traversed by any man in history — more bitter 
than that which Napoleon passed through as he fled 
from the field of Waterloo, for Napoleon had been 
famihar with realities all his life and knew that the jest 
might at any moment be against him. If we would 
measure the disillusion we must look at the situation 
to-day in the light of the faith with which the Kaiser 
set out. That faith is best realised from a remark which 
he made to a member of the present Government on 
each of the two occasions on which they met. It was 



20 THE WAR LORDS 

sometliing like this : " I cannot understand why you 
ally yourself to a broken reed like France. Should war 
begin, my armies will be in Paris within a fortnight." 
And then he repeated with the sunny confidence of one 
who had all the keys of fate beneath his fingers — 
"Within a fortnight." 

That was the dream. Let us look at the reality. 
What is the capital fact that emerges from the events 
of the past nine months ? I think it is this : the hyp- 
notism of the Prussian helmet is gone. For nearly fifty 
years it has held unchallenged sway over the mind of 
Europe. Those of us who are middle-aged began our 
conscious life under the shadow of that formidable symbol 
of conquest and power. There is a story — I think it is 
one of Maupassant's — ^which tells how a Prussian soldier 
in 1870 got separated from his fellows, went to sleep in 
a ditch, woke up and looked over the wall of a neighbour- 
ing farm. As the helmet rose above the wall, the brave 
fellows inside fled, leaving the Uhlan to range at large. 
Presently the brave fellows returned with reinforce- 
ments, surrounded the farm and captured the Uhlan. 
And the tale ended with the presentation of the Cross 
of the Legion of Honour or some other decoration to the 
hero of the victory. 

That story illustrates in an extravagant way the legend 
of the Prussian helmet. It was an enchanted, mystic 
helmet, winged with victory. A legend of this sort is a 
supreme military asset, and Germany has lived on it for 
nearly half a century. She lives on it no longer. The 
German soldier is stripped of all the glamour with which 
the triumphs of Bismarck and Moltke invested him. He 
is not only not the best soldier in Europe ; he is not the 
second best. The fact is not due to intrinsic inferiority, 
but to a mistaken tradition. He is not wanting in courage 
but he is wanting in individuality. He can advance to 



THE KAISER 21 

be shot down in the mass, for he has been taught that 
collective courage, but he cannot stand to be shot down 
alone. 

This inferiority of the human factor is related to 
another cause of disullusion. The faith of the Kaiser 
was founded on Krupps. It was believed that the war 
when it came would be won by the big gun, and full of 
this conviction the Germans placed a reliance on that 
arm which has not been warranted by experience. Its 
achievements, it is true, have been immense. Wher- 
ever it has been able to come within range of the for- 
tresses it has ground them to powder. The fortress of 
position is no longer tenable except by a far-flung system 
of mobile defence based on earthworks. Even in the 
field the guns will triumph unless there is an adequate 
gunpower against them. Nor can we exaggerate the 
advantage which Germany derived, and still derives, 
from its overwhelming superiority in machine-guns, 
which are as powerful an instrument in defence as the 
big gun is in attack. But in spite of all this the German 
faith in iron has not justified itself. The point perhaps 
may be put thus : In the German Army the gun is first 
and the men are only subsidiary to the gun; among the 
Allies the man is first and the gun is only the means of 
preparing the way for the decisive action of the men. 
After nine months there would seem to be little doubt 
as to which is the sound theory. Battles are won to- 
day, as they have always been won, by men, and it is 
because Germany believed that they were won by 
material and that the only use for men was as material 
that she has failed. Whatever guns could do she has 
done, and if she could have repeated the tactics of 1870, 
her early superiority in big guns would have given her 
a speedy triumph. But she has been disillusioned here 
also. The Kaiser's campaign was based on the lessons 



22 THE WAR LORDS 

of 1870. He ought to have remembered that nothing 
was less likely than that France would allow those 
tactics to be repeated — that never again would she allow 
her armies to be driven out of the open where the genius 
of her men is at its highest and where great howitzers 
cannot be the final arbiter. 

If we would understand the measure of the Kaiser's 
failure, we must recall the calculations that coursed 
through his mind on that momentous Saturday as he 
stood in the midst of his council, pen in hand, balancing 
the risks and chances before taking the plunge into war. 
On the face of it, the combination against him was 
overwhelming. His eastern frontier was threatened 
by an enemy numerically stronger than himself; on 
his western frontier was an enemy numerically inferior, 
perhaps in the proportion of seven to ten, an enemy 
which Germany had beaten with ease in the past, but 
which, nevertheless, could not be despised, and which 
would have the support of the British Army and the 
Belgian Army. At sea his fleet would be held in check 
by the most powerful navy in the world. 

What had he to put against this combination ? He 
had one ally, Austria, upon whom he could rely, but 
that ally was already engaged in a war with Serbia. 
Italy was an ally only in name, had been such since 
the Bismarck-Crispi days, and would certainly refuse to 
fight for the aggrandisement of its historic enemy. For 
the rest, Turkey, whom he had cultivated so industri- 
ously, might come in if things went well with him — 
perhaps even Sweden and Holland might join him, but 
only under compulsion, and when he had shown that 
he could do without them. Here he was getting into 
the region of speculation. Still more speculative were 
his calculations as to internal trouble in England over 
the Ulster question and in Russian Poland. 



THE KAISER 23 

We can conceive Mm summing up. The combination 
against him was composed of soHd facts — Russia, France, 
Great Britain, Belgium, Serbia. His own combination, 
apart from Austria, was a thing of shadows and hopes. 
And he knew Austria's genius for defeat too well to put 
excessive confidence in her support. He came back, 
therefore, to the one indisputable asset at his com- 
mand — the gigantic war machine that he had perfected 
for his purpose through twenty-five years of peace. 

Was that machine, unaided, capable of giving him 
victory over Europe ? And here we can see his mind 
rapidly estimating the value of the enemy. The 
Belgians ? What rabble were they to impede his path ? 
He would go through them as lightly as through a flight 
of snowflakes. He did not understand that liberty is 
a more powerful engine than any ever manufactured at 
Essen. It was the delay at Liege and the wholly un- 
expected resistance offered by the Belgian Army through- 
out August and September that sowed the seed of all 
that followed. And so with the English — those fools 
of fortune who obstructed his path to world dominion. 
What had he to fear from this race of sentimentalists 
which could not stamp out rebellion in Ulster, or whip 
its insurgent women into obedience, and which was so hag- 
ridden by the fetish of liberty that it gave self-govern- 
ment to the people it had conquered ? It was a bubble 
that would vanish at a touch of his sword. The British 
Navy ? Yes, that was a reality. But perhaps Admiral 
Tirpitz might make a lucky stroke, and, at the worst, 
he would, adapting Bismarck's phrase, deal with the 
British Navy at Paris. Serbia ? Well, even Austria's 
facility for defeat had its limits. There remained France 
and Russia. These were the only realities that his 
calculations left him to face. Of these one was swift, 
but inferior; the other slow, but formidable. He was 



24 THE WAR LORDS 

both swift and formidable. We see his sum getting 
near the conclusion. He will launch the whole power 
of his terrible machine against France, scatter her 
armies, overwhelm her in a fortnight and dictate terms 
of peace at Paris. Then, master of Western Europe, 
he will turn to the East with his incomparable machine 
and destroy the hosts of Russia at his leisure. 

That was the conclusion of his calculations. On 
paper it looks even convincing. In that respect it is 
typical of so much that is wrong with the Prussian mind. 
That mind is bookish and theoretic. It is at once 
astonishingly learned and incomparably ignorant. It 
knows all the material facts and ignores all the human 
and moral facts. The incidents of these days are 
strewn with examples. I take three. Germany is 
eagerly appealing for the support of the small neutral 
states and at the same time its chancellor talks of the 
treaty he has signed guaranteeing the neutrality of one 
of these states as " a scrap of paper " to be torn up at 
will. It cants about " the freedom of the seas " and 
sinks great liners fiUed with non-combatants at sight 
and without stretching out a hand to save the innocent 
victims. It is appealing for the sympathy of the United 
States and at the same time razes Louvain to the ground, 
drops bombs upon sleeping cities and sows the sea with 
floating mines — does everything in fact which is most 
calculated to outrage the moral sentiment of the most 
moral and sentimental people in the western world. 

And so in the case of the calculations on which the 
Kaiser based his decision. They have come to grief 
not because they were intrinsically wrong, but because 
they left out the realities. His faith in his machine 
was sound. He believed that he could " hack his way 
through " to Paris in a fortnight. And nothing is more 
clear than this, that if he had had to deal with France 



THE KAISER 25 

alone and with, obvious material facts alone, his calcula- 
tion would have proved true. The world has never 
seen anything comparable with that tremendous drive 
southward from the Sambre to the Marne. It was not 
like the movement of an army, but like the movement 
of some mechanical force instinct with devilish purpose. 

But like all mechanism it had to work according to ab- 
solute conditions. It admitted of no unknown or spiritual 
factors. It was a machine, and it had the reasoning of 
machinery. Now war never was and never can be a 
matter of Force alone. However perfect the machine, 
it must be directed with a large understanding of the 
intangible factors involved — ^national feeling, personal 
values, the psychology of men and peoples, the play of 
accident. History is lull of the triumph of these things 
over material calculation, and no soil is more rich in such 
lessons than that of the Netherlands. 

Take, as an instance of what is meant, that episode 
after the battle of Antietam in the American Civil War. 
One after another his generals implored Lee to retreat 
across the Potomac. The losses had been appalling. 
Hood was quite unmanned. " My God! " cried Lee to 
him, " where is the splendid division you had this morn- 
ing ? " " They are lying on the field where you sent 
them," answered Hood. Even Jackson urged with- 
drawal. But Lee was immovable. " Gentlemen," he 
said, rising in his stirrups, " we will not cross the Potomac 
to-night. ... If McClellan wants to fight in the morn- 
ing I will give him battle. Go." Now, according to 
all material calculations, Lee was wrong. But one of 
the qualities that give him a place among the greatest 
commanders of history was his grasp of the mind and 
temperament of his opponents. He had one method for 
this man, another for that. He knew that the over- 
caution of McClellan would prevent him following up his 



26 THE WAR LORDS 

blow, and lie was right. McClellan did not attack him 
next morning, and Lee was left with the prestige of a 
moral victory. 

It was elements like these that the Kaiser left out. 
He forged a bolt that was to go through every obstruc- 
tion to his goal in a given time. It was to be irresistible, 
overwhelming, final. The completeness of the prepara- 
tions will remain a monument of German efficiency and 
organisation. And their failure will remain a monument 
of the truth that Force is not the absolute master of the 
destiny of men even on the field of battle, and that the 
soul of man counts for more than " reeking tube and 
iron shard." 

But if the military failure has been emphatic, not less 
conspicuous has been the political failure. Germany 
began the war fortified with the most amazing delusions 
about the world. They were the delusions of a bookish 
and unimaginative people who laboriously study the 
facts, but miss the meaning. Take the delusion in 
regard to the British Empire. Time will show — the 
evidence is accumulating in a remarkable way — how 
much their calculations were based on the Ulster affair. 
It was hoped that England would not fight because she 
would be engaged in a revolutionary struggle at home. 
It was believed that if she did fight her empire would 
collapse like a house of cards. She was a decadent 
nation, because militarism was not her faith, because 
she trifled with the Carson campaign, because she 
allowed the suffragettes to play wild tricks and did not 
suppress them with a ruthless hand, because she gave 
self-government to South Africa, and so on. AH this 
was the mark of weakness — the mark of a dying people 
feebly grasping the sceptre of dominion. It was a fatal 
miscalculation. What the Prussian mind took for 
weakness was Britain's impregnable strength. The 



THE KAISER 27 

Prussian mind could not grasp the idea of English liberty 
any more than Lord Milner can grasp it. It is that 
principle of liberty which has made the whole Empire 
rise with such passion to this great argument. The 
Kaiser has not destroyed the Empire : he has established 
it. He has made it realise as it never realised before its 
deep and abiding unity, its lofty spiritual meaning, its 
great gospel of freedom. 

Or take the delusions about Belgium. The Kaiser 
knows to-day that the invasion of Belgium was not only 
a crime, but a blunder. As a military expedient it was 
wrong; as a political expedient it was fatal, for it left 
Germany without a friend in the world, except the Turk. 
And the policy of " frightfulness " was equally ruinous. 
It was intended to keep Belgium subservient by terror, 
but it overshot the mark. It made her soldiers heroes 
and her people martyrs. It shocked the conscience of 
the world and left Germany a criminal at the bar of 
humanity. Her overthrow was no longer merely a 
political necessity: it was a sacred duty. Against the 
flaming indictment of that enormous infamy all her 
petty arts to win the favour of the neutral states have 
been vain. They are arts that, again, reveal her strange 
limitations, her laborious futility, her failure to under- 
stand the springs of human action. She engineers a 
wonderful campaign of private letters, she buys up news- 
papers in every land, she organises press agencies. These 
devices seem, at first, very clever, very Machiavellian, 
very dangerous. In the end they are nothing. In the 
presence of the awful facts mere ingenuities perish. 

But though it is the folly of German policy which is 
most interesting to the psychologist, it is its wickedness 
which is the practical concern of society. The world 
is in the presence of an organised criminality without 
precedent in history. Not since Genghis Khan devas- 



28 THE WAR LORDS 

tated Asia from Pekin to the Dnieper has the human 
family suffered such desolation. But Genghis Khan 
was a barbarian who recognised no law, human or divine. 
The Kaiser's war is a betrayal of every human law that 
he has ratified, and an outrage on every moral sanction 
by which civilised society lives. Mr. Asquith and Mr. 
Balfour have declared that this war is a war for the 
defence of the public law of the world. It is a war to 
assert the authority of a collective justice over the affairs 
of nations. The German position is the denial of that 
authority. Treitschke declared that there was no power 
above the state, that the state was might, that it could 
be brought to no court and subjected to no punishment 
apart from the punishment of a superior might. 

It is true that in practice the Kaiser has even gone 
beyond Treitschke's teaching. For example, while he 
taught that treaties could not stand in the way of the 
purposes of the state, he laid it down as the duty of a 
state to denounce a treaty before breaking it. Germany 
did not denounce the Belgian treaty. She has not de- 
nounced it to this day. It stands in scarlet evidence 
against her. But it is Treitschke's gospel of the un- 
challenged supremacy of the state (or, more truly Hegel's, 
for he first sowed the seed) upon which Germany 
is acting, and it is that gospel the world has to break. 
What in practice has it meant ? It has meant that in 
the sight of Germany there is no moral law on the earth 
to-day. War in any case is a cruel and merciless thing. 
It is its business to be merciless. It is organised murder; 
but because it is organised it is governed by rules. It 
is the equivalent in national affairs to the duel in private 
affairs, and there is nothing more rigorous than the 
respect with which the laws of the duel are observed — 
no dishonour so deep as that implied by disobedience 
to those laws. The meaning of this is clear. Without 



THE KAISER 29 

that stringent code the duel would be the sport of the 
assassin. The laws are necessary to protect all who 
follow it, against what the general conscience knows to 
be wrong. 

In the same way the rules of war are made by the 
world as a whole for the common protection in case 
of need. It is as though in normal times we know that 
we have a wild beast amongst us, caged and chained. 
One day it will be let loose. We do not know who will 
be the victims of its fury, ourselves or our rivals. But 
we agree, in the general interests of humanity, to put 
certain limits upon its powers. To-day the wild beast 
is loose, and Germany has released it from every re- 
straint to which she had given her sacred pledge. The 
crimes of Louvain, Dinant, Aerschot, Senlis, and Scar- 
borough, the collective punishments, the poisoned wells, 
the deadly gases, the submarine murders, all culminating 
in the crowning infamy of the Lusitania, are declarations 
to the world that Germany knows no law of God or man 
in the pursuit of her object. " We did wrong," said 
Herr Bethmann-HoUweg, in speaking of the invasion of 
Belgium, " but we had to hack our way through." He 
did not say it to apologise to the world. He said it to 
justify Germany to the world. 

And that has been the attitude throughout. Germany 
has committed these official crimes knowing that she 
was breaking her solemn covenant with civilisation. 
She knew that her bond forbade her to bombard un- 
defended towns — that the same bond forbade her to 
exact collective punishment for individual offences, to 
plunder the towns and rob the citizens, to drown inno- 
cent women and children. Yet she has butchered and 
burned her way through Belgium and France, she has 
taken hundreds of lives for single and unproved offences, 
she has demolished towns for revenge and stolen the 



30 THE WAR LORDS 

wealtli of the cities she has occupied. These things have 
been done not in anger, but on policy. They have been 
done as it were in cold blood, according to a hideous 
theory of terrorism. They are the crimes of the German 
Government and it is these crimes with which the civil 
conscience of the world has to deal. 

How are they to be dealt with ? We know how the 
military power of Germany is to be dealt with. The 
sword must be broken by the sword, and Germany must 
make good to the last penny the material evil she has 
wrought. But the field of battle is not the only place 
where judgment must be delivered. If we are to emerge 
from this frightful harvest with any gain to set against 
our loss, it must be gain in the region of the moral 
governance of nations. Humanity must strike a blow 
against the infamous doctrine that there is no power 
above the state. That blow cannot be struck by the 
sword. If respect for treaties, for international law, for 
the plighted word of states is to be rehabilitated it must 
be rehabilitated by the deliberate verdict of society. 

In other words, these crimes against the law of nations 
must be avenged, not by similar crimes on our part, but 
in the same way as they would be avenged in civil 
society. If a man murders another he is tried for his 
crime, and if he is proved guilty he is hanged. If he 
breaks the law which society has made for its protection 
he is answerable to the law. That is the principle that 
should be applied here. Let it be made clear that at the 
end of the war, and as a part of the conditions of peace, 
those who have been responsible for crimes against 
humanity, against the civil population and against the 
laws of nations shall be tried as common criminals by 
courts of justice according to the laws of the land they 
have outraged. 

This principle should be applicable to all sides and 



THE KAISER 31 

it should be applicable not to underlings but to principals, 
to men like Biilow who issued that infamous incitement 
to crime at Dinant, above all to the Kaiser himself. It 
is not for us to say what Germany shall do with the 
dynasty that has brought it to this disaster. That we 
must leave to the people themselves who, unless they 
are hopelessly unteachable, will have been enlightened 
by the war. But it is for us to say what shall be done 
with the men who have outraged the public law, broken 
their bonds with society, and murdered inoffensive 
citizens. The greater the position of the criminal the 
greater the need for such an example as will strike the 
imagination of the world and show that humanity has 
ceased to be the sport of despots. The Laird of Auchin- 
leck told Johnson that Cromwell " gar'd kings ken that 
they had a lith in their necks." It was a useful lesson. 
It has been rich in the fruits of freedom. The world 
will be all the better if, after the war, there is another 
reminder that the divine right is an antiquated folly, 
that kings can only be tolerated as expressions of the 
popular will, and that if they offend against the laws 
of humanity they must pay the penalty like any other 
criminal. 

This is a matter which is as vital to the neutral 
countries as to the belligerents. In a sense, it is more 
vital to them; for if there is no moral law in the world, 
if the law of might is to take us back unchallenged to 
barbarism, it is the small countries which will be the 
chief sufferers. For this reason I am glad to see that 
the movement for action on the lines I have indicated 
is coming from neutral quarters. Senor Perez Triana, 
who represented Colombia at the last Hague Convention, 
has already called for the punishment of the criminal 
acts of this war according to the common criminal code. 
That is a direction in which the opinion of neutral 



32 THE WAR LORDS 

countries, and especially of the United States of America, 
should be mobilised. It is in this direction that the 
world can most effectively repudiate the Prussian doc- 
trine that the state is above the law and re-establish in 
human society the authority of moral and legal bonds. 

In closing his remarkable estimate of the Kaiser, 
written in 1891, the Portuguese poet, Ega de Queiroz, 
said: "He boldly takes upon himself responsibilities 
which in all nations are divided among various bodies 
of the state — he alone judges, he alone executes, because 
to him alone it is (not to his ministers, to his council, or 
to his parliament) that God, the God of the Hohen- 
zollerns, imparts his transcendental inspiration. He 
must therefore be infallible and invincible. At the 
first disaster — whether it be inflicted by his burghers 
or by his people in the streets of Berlin, or by allied 
armies on the plains of Europe — Germany will at once 
conclude that his much-vaunted alliance with God was 
the trick of a wily despot. Then will there not be stones 
enough from Lorraine to Pomerania to stone this counter- 
feit Moses. William II. is in very truth casting against 
fate those terrible ' iron dice ' to which the now-forgotten 
Bismarck once alluded. If he win he may have within 
and without the frontiers altars such as were raised to 
Augustus ; should he lose, exile, the traditional exile, in 
England awaits him — a degraded exile, the exile with 
which he so sternly threatens those who deny his infalli- 
bility. . . . In the course of years (may God make them 
slow and lengthy!) this youth, ardent, pleasing, fertile in 
imagination, of sincere, perhaps heroic, soul, may be 
sitting in his Berlin Schloss presiding over the destinies 
of Europe — or he may be in the Hotel Metropole in 
London sadly unpacking from his exile's handbag the 
battered double crown of Prussia and Germany." 

It was a picturesque forecast, based on a very just 



THE KAISER 33 

reading of the young monarch. But it was vitiated by- 
one fact. It left the criminal out of the calculation. 
Twenty-four years later we can correct the forecast by 
the light of crimes against humanity that have no 
parallel in civilised history. Had De Queiroz penetrated 
to this dark region of the Kaiser's character he would 
not have limited his destiny to a universal throne or a 
lodging at the Hotel Metropole. He would have in- 
cluded in its possibilities the dock and the scaffold. 



KING ALBERT 

AND THE TRAGEDY OF BELGIUM 

When the nightmare has passed and men look back with 
astonishment at the days when earth was hell, there is 
one episode that will stand out conspicuous even amidst 
the universal horror. It is the ruin of Bels^ium. There 
is no parallel in history to the fate that has befallen 
that unhappy country. There is no crime in history 
com.parable with that crime. Peace will come again, 
punishment will be exacted, and the obli\don of time 
will heal many wounds, but neither peace nor time nor 
penalty will wipe out the stain of Belgium from the soul 
of Germany. That is indelible — that can never be for- 
gotten and never be forgiven. It condemns Germany 
to eternal obloquy, and places the Kaiser among the 
great criminals of the human race. 

We are too near the tragedy and have our minds filled 
with too many anxieties to be able to measure this vast 
wrong. We see it only in fragments as an incident of 
the great struggle in which the destiny of the whole 
world is at stake. We watch the sad stream of the 
homeless that disembarks at Folkstone, the piteous 
crowds that stand at Charing Cross, aimless and helpless, 
incapable even of communicating their wretchedness, 
the throngs that gather around the General Buildings 
in Aldwych as a beacon light in the darkness that has 
overwhelmed them. But these are only the fortunate. 
They have escaped from the desolation that was once 
their country. They give no measure of the immeasur- 
able woe. 

34 



KING ALBERT 35 

To conceive that inconceivable thing we must think 
of Belgium in the terms of our own land, we must see 
England from HujI to Brighton swept by a tidal wave 
of destruction, the towns in ashes, the industry paralysed, 
the fields a waste, the population dead or scattered, the 
governm.ent in exile, London in the hands of the enemy 
and cut off from the world. We must see that forlorn 
procession from Antwerp, surely the most tragic in 
history, wandering in the wet autumm days over the 
levels of Holland — the whole population of a great city 
fleeing at foot's pace they know not whither from the 
terror that is in possession of their homes. We must 
see Brussels silent under the iron heel of the invader, its 
people, rich and poor alike, kept alive by soup kitchens, 
its brave Mayor in prison, its liberties gone, its people 
hardly daring to breathe lest the " frightfulness " that 
has laid waste Louvain, Term_onde, Dinant, and a score 
of other happy and thriving towns descend upon it. 
We must see what all this means in the terms of in- 
dividual misery — hunger, bereavement, homelessness, 
families stricken with every woe that can afflict human- 
ity, a whole nation left naked to the wolves. 

I had never thought a time would come when I should 
look on the soldier's uniform with envy, and when my 
one grievance against the year of my birth would be that 
it forbade me to join the throng outside the recruiting 
office. But, then, I never thought that this fair earth 
would become a hell, that a time would come when to 
awake in the golden light of September mornings would 
be to awake to a sense of universal desolation and death 
that darkens the sun and makes the peaceful routine 
of other days seem almost unbearable. The sunshine 
that floods the quiet English countryside as I write 
floods too poor stricken Belgium and the fair land of 
France, floods the ravaged towns and the burning villages 



36 THE WAR LORDS 

and the trampled cornfields where the dead lie more 
thick than the sheaves of corn. 

But it is not the dead who make it so hard to sit idle. 
The soldier has his compensations. There is joy in 
battle and peace in death; but think of the old and the 
young, the women and the helpless fleeing before this 
unimaginable horror, cowering in cellars, starving in 
woods, their homes in ashes, their husbands and fathers 
and brothers gone they know not where, and every 
moment an age of nameless fear. I see in the scene 
described by Mr. Percy Philip all this vast tragedy 
summed up in one pitiful picture — the three fearful 
peasants digging the hurried grave of the woman whom 
they had found with a bullet wound in her head. They 
did not know her name or whence she had fled or what 
was her tragic story. All that they knew was that they 
had found her, hke so many more, dead in the red wake 
of the tempest. See in her the image of Belgium, the 
image of France, and we have some measure of this 
universal woe. 

Or take those scenes described in The Times of the 
same day by Mr. A. J. Dawe. He and his friend are 
captured by a German troop which is on its way to 
destroy the village of Steen-Ocker: 

" We turned off into the main street of the village, 
and were made to hold up our hands and taken to the 
far end of the street. Here we were covered by a couple 
of soldiers armed with revolvers. Close to us in the 
middle of the road was stationed a Maxim gun ready to 
mow down the inhabitants if they resisted the burning 
of the village. For three terrible hours we had to stand 
there watching the destruction that began at the other 
end of the street. The men who were guarding us 
told us that from certain houses shots had been 
fired by the civihans during the morning upon a 



KING ALBERT 37 

passing German troop and that several Uhlans had been 
killed. 

" They began upon the houses from which the shots 
were supposed to have been fired. These houses were 
soon splitting with fire and shooting up great flames. 
Here and there the fire soon spread along the whole 
street. The women and children were herded together 
and set aside. We heard the quick sounds of rifle shots 
as the escaping civilians were picked off." 

He is released and reaches the city which was once 
Louvain — that name that will be branded on the brow 
of Germany for ever: 

" Burning houses were every moment falling into 
the roads; shooting was still going on. The dead and 
dying, burnt and burning, lay on all sides. Over some 
the Germans had placed sacks. I saw about half a 
dozen women and children. In one street I saw two 
little children walking hand in hand over the bodies of 
the dead men. I have no words to describe these 
things." 

No, there are no words for these things. They strike 
deeper than words, deeper even than tears — strike to 
that ultimate indignation that has no relief except the 
relief of action. If the Kaiser and his army should come 
to disaster, and have to flee, beaten, through the land 
they have ravaged, they will pay a dreadful reckoning. 

Belgium is blotted out. The curtain has fallen upon 
its tragedy, and behind that curtain the people crouch 
in terror while the barbarians tunnel the land with mines 
and turn it into a fortress. 

And if the ruin of Belgium stands out in pathetic 
relief from the general tragedy, the figure of King Albert 
will be equally distinguished among those personalities 
which have been thrown into prominence by the catas- 
trophe. The remarkable thing in this colossal struggle 



38 THE WAR LORDS 

is the absence of the element of personality. It is as 
though the forces at work are too vast to permit of the 
emergence of the individual, as though nothing but some 
collective, impersonal intelligence is capable of manipu- 
lating hosts which are beyond the comprehension of the 
human mind. No doubt also this absence of the con- 
spicuous figure is due partly to the secrecy that invests the 
war and partly to the fact that the weight of the issues 
involved is so oppressive that we are in no mood to 
discuss men. But whatever the cause the truth is that 
apart from the Kaiser there is no one who dominates the 
stage in a personal sense. General Joffre is still almost 
the shadow of a name, a m_an wrapped in impenetrable 
silence, but a man nevertheless whose deeds are begin- 
ning to pronounce a golden verdict upon him. Sir 
John French is justifying the confidence universally felt 
in his genius, but he too seems almost lost in so vast a 
theatre. For the rest the Grand Duke Nicholas, von 
Hindenberg, and von Kluck have become names — have 
conveyed to the public that subtle feeling of distinction 
which is the mark of personality. 

There is, however, only one figure who has touched 
the imagination of the world by the qualities of humanity 
and heroism. The King of the Belgians has won the 
hearts of men as few kings or subjects ever win them, 
and whatever the result of the war he will be the symbol 
of its human and chivalric aspects, just as the Kaiser 
will be the symbol of its barbarities and ambitions. If 
Europe effects its deliverance from the peril that over- 
shadows us it will owe the fact largely to the unparalleled 
sacrifice of Belgium and the heroic inspiration of Bel- 
gium's king. None of those who have any reserves about 
kingship need have hesitation in making this confession, 
for King Albert is a king after our own heart — the civic 
head of a free people. 



KING ALBiiRT 39 

Not long ago the name of the King of the Belgians 
was a name of evil im.port. Leopold II., in his vices, 
ambitions, and magnificence, played the role of the 
grand monarque on a tiny stage. He belonged to the 
tradition of Fran9ois I., Henry VIII., and Louis XIV., 
and had he been cast for a bigger part in sovereignty, 
his masterful, aggressive, and conscienceless spirit would 
have plunged Europe in trouble. His passion for splen- 
dour was largely at the root of the infamy of his rule in 
the Congo. Men were tortured in the rubber forests 
of the Congo that he might ape magnificence and build 
great palaces of em.pire at home. And his contempt 
for the poor was as flagrant as his domestic tyranny and 
his Diivate scandals. At his death M. Vandervelde 
pronounced on him one of the m.ost terrible verdicts 
ever passed upon a King. " We have tried," he said, 
" to find in this long reign of forty-four years one act 
of goodness, of mercy, of charity. Alas, we can find 
nothing." 

There was never a more striking change in personality 
than that achieved when his nephew, Albert, the son of 
the Count of Flanders, cam.e to the throne. Like his 
uncle, King Albert is a man of great stature and master- 
ful will; but there the likeness ends. So far from play- 
ing the grand monarch he is the best type of the citizen 
king that Europe has yet produced. M. Waxweiler, 
the economist of the Solvay Institute at Brussels, who 
was King Albert's tutor and who is still privileged with 
his close friendship, gave me long ago a pleasant picture 
of the plain and homely life and the eager social interests 
of this remarkable man. Pomp and circumstance are 
entirely alien to his democratic spirit, and it is a popular 
saying that when he ascended the throne he did so " with 
his wife and children." Mr. MacDonnell, in his Life of 
the king, relates in this connection a pleasant incident 



40 THE WAR LORDS 

of the accession. The king's daughter, too young to 
figure in the procession, was placed at a window with a 
supply of bread-and-butter. As her father and mother 
passed by she cheered with the crowds outside, waving, 
instead of hat or handkerchief, her slice of bread-and- 
butter. The story may be a pretty journalistic inven- 
tion, but it is true to the homely spirit of the citizen king. 
He has reduced the flummery of Courts to their lowest 
expression, and moves among his people with an easy, 
unpretentious friendliness, qualified by a modesty that 
amounts almost to bashfulness. When he and his queen 
come to England, for which he has a deep affection, they 
come asplain citizens, put up at an hotel, visit the theatre, 
go shopping, and vanish without the world being any 
the wiser. 

It is said that a wise man is careful in the choice of 
his parents. Certainly King Albert was fortunate in his 
parentage. His father was as remarkable for his 
capacity as his brother Leopold, but his abilities ran 
in much nobler channels, moral, aesthetic, intellectual. 
He was a student of sociology when that subject was 
still httle understood, and his interest in this direction, 
as also in regard to politics and art, had a profound 
influence on his son — all the more profound because he 
had the wisdom to teach by example rather than precept, 
in the French rather than the Prussian spirit. Both he 
and his wife — a HohenzoUern, but of a collateral branch 
ot the family that had suffered from the aggression of the 
Prussian house — ^had a genuine passion for the public 
good and a homely simpHcity in their domestic ways. 
In a very real and rare sense they cultivated the art 
of plain living and high thinking. 

From such a school. King Albert emerged with a 
human and modern outlook perhaps unprecedented 
in the records of royalty. His uncle's passion was the 



KING ALBERT 41 

greatness of his sovereignty; King Albert's passion is 
the happiness of his people and the good name of his 
country. To advance these his whole life has been 
devoted with extraordinary singleness of aim. His 
chivalrous spirit brought him into sharp conflict with 
his arrogant uncle, and the crime of the Congo made 
the breach final. When the report of the Congo Com- 
mission was issued he was so deeply impressed that, 
disregarding the hostility of the formidable Leopold, 
he set out for the Congo to see the truth for himself. I 
have been told that Leopold never spoke to him again. 
He returned from his investigation in August 1909, and 
four months later he became king. His accession to 
the throne was coincident with the wiping out of the 
blot of the Congo from the record of his country. This 
directness of personal action has been the dominant 
note of his career. In order to reign wisely he must 
know the facts for himself. He knew that the greatness 
of a country is expressed not in palaces but in the lives 
of its people, and as heir to the throne he set himself to 
learn what those lives were like. He worked in the 
mines, he drove engines on the railways, he mixed with 
the working classes in all their activities. Nowhere was 
he better known than among the fishermen of the coast, 
the revival of whose industry was one of his pet schemes. 
And the constant theme of his speeches in the Senate 
and elsewhere was the well-being of the working popula- 
tion of the country. His speech on coming to the throne 
announced a new national ideal — the ideal of the demo- 
cratic state. Even the language of his speech expressed 
that ideal, for he spoke in the Flemish of the poor as 
well as in the French of the official and educated com- 
munity. He declared that " the intellectual and moral 
forces of a nation are alone the foundations of its pros- 
perity," and laid emphasis on the amelioration of the 



42 THE WAR LORDS 

conditions of labour, on education, and on the care of 
the poor as the true concerns of statesmanship. 

But if the condition of the poor was to be raised, some- 
thing else was necessary besides sympathy and know- 
ledge. That something was the prosperity of industry 
and commerce. Now there was one defect in the equip- 
ment of his country which, as a sound economist, chiefly 
disturbed him. Belgium had a great overseas trade 
and the second port in Europe; but its m.erchandise was 
carried in foreign bottoms, chiefly English and German. 
He saw that this was not merely a source of commercial 
weakness but also a political menace. That menace 
came from Germany. Subtly, stealthily, that country 
was acquiring a predominant influence in the life of 
Antwerp. Germans were capturing the Chamber of 
Commerce, the marine insurance business, the control 
of the banks, the possession of the navigation companies, 
of the freighting trade, of ship-broking, of everything. 
Antwerp was becoming a city in which the people were 
Belgians but the masters were Germans. It was an 
open boast of the Germans that they possessed Antwerp 
and would soon possess Brussels also. 

To change all this, Albert, while still heir apparent, 
set himself to emulate the example of Peter the Great, 
though with a nobler purpose. The establishmxent of 
a mercantile marine for his country became the dominant 
object of his life, and to accomplish it he assumed the 
disguise of a newspaper reporter and visited the principal 
ports and shipyards of Europe to carry out his investiga- 
tions. It was thus that he went to Belfast in 1908. 
And since his accession he has pursued, his purpose with 
less privacy, for he can no longer pass himself off as a 
reporter, but not less enthusiasm, as his visit to the 
United States showed. 

Among the many miscalculations of the Kaiser there 



KING ALBERT 43 

was none more fatal than his contempt for this simple 
unassuming citizen king and his little people. He thought 
that, willing or unwilling, he could take them in his 
stride. He would have preferred to have Albert for his 
friend of course, and he spared no pains to win him with 
patronage and flattery. He visited the Exhibition at 
Brussels in 1910, and was welcomed in the Hotel de 
Ville by Burgomaster Max, the brave man who four 
years later was to defy his hosts and to disappear in his 
prisons. On that occasion the Kaiser made, according 
to his custom., a speech in extravagant praise of the 
progress of Belgium — that Naboth's vineyard on which 
he had set his heart. And we know from the French 
Yellow Book how when, in August 191 3, his plans were 
ripening and he had finally yielded to the militarists, 
he, accompanied by Count von Moltke, made his final 
bid for the support of King Albert. It was then that 
the young king knew that the storm that had been 
threatening his country was inevitable and imminent, 
and he made the choice of a brave man and a great king. 
Indeed, he had made it already. He knew the Hohen- 
zollerns of Prussia. He knew the ruthless way in which 
they had snatched Schleswig-Holstein from a junior 
branch of the iamily. He knew that he could never 
buy off that brigand power by surrender — that, whatever 
his service, the victory of Germany would end the inde- 
pendence of his country. He had no passion for military 
glory. All his interests were pacific and social, all his 
hopes centred in the commercial and industrial develop- 
ment of his country. He had studied the military art 
of course. As a youth of seventeen he had shared the 
training and discipline of the farmers and tradesmen 
who were preparing for the rank of officers in the army. 
He had then given little promise of greatness, for he had 
none of the precocious brilliancy that is often so illusive 



44 THE WAR LORDS 

and fleeting. Talent reveals itself early, but character 
is a later growth., and it was the quality of character by 
which this shy, lanky youth with his studious and reflec- 
tive habit was one day to win the admiration of the 
world. But though he had no warlike enthusiasm, he 
studied the art of the soldier with the same thoroughness 
that he gave to all his tasks, and when he became king 
and saw the cloud gathering in the east, saw that one day 
his country might have to make the choice between 
fighting Prussia or passing into ignoble servitude to it, 
he hastened the scheme of military re-organisation, 
which was still only half-completed when the storm 
burst. 

His rejection of the Kaiser's overtures was a wound 
to the vanity of that monarch, but it was not regarded 
as a serious obstacle in his path. To his essentially 
theatrical mind the quality and importance of this 
modest king of a little country were not discernible. It 
was the first grave blunder in the war. Events have 
revealed that behind this life of unpretentious industry, 
domestic affection, and social enthusiasm there is a 
man cast in heroic mould — a man prepared to see his 
country laid waste and to die in the last entrenchment 
with his people rather than surrender the priceless jewel 
of the freedom of his country. It is said that he fired the 
last shot in the defence of Antwerp. It may be true. I 
do not think it is, for the act does not accord with the 
wholly un theatrical spirit of the man. He would not 
fire the last shot for show, but he would assuredly die 
the first or the last death for honour. And whatever 
the course of the war, whatever the fate of Europe, it 
is in him that the future will see the most human, the 
most knightly figure of this Titanic struggle. 

It is not wise perhaps at this stage to probe too closely 
the secrets of those last tragic days at Antwerp; but 



KING ALBERT 45 

when those secrets are revealed the spirit of this man 
will shine out with a radiance that will glow in the pages 
of history for ever. Like Grenville of old he cried, 
" Fight on, fight on," when the day seemed hopeless and 
the end imminent, and when the hearts of those about 
him were in despair. He and his people have won an 
immortality that will be a precious inheritance and an 
enduring inspiration for humanity. They have given 
us a new faith in our kind. They have shown us that 
in the most peaceful and bourgeois people the passion 
of patriotism can still flame into great deeds, that the 
soul of man is mightier than all the engines of Krupps, 
that in the final ordeal there is found in us the deathless 
spark that defies death. As we think of this scattered 
and tortured people, crushed at home under the harrow 
of the invader, wandering in hosts over the plains of 
Holland, starving — tens of thousands of them — on the 
sea shore at Flushing, we do not know whether the 
deepest feeling that surges in us is pity for their sorrow 
or pride in their glory. But this we know, that the sorrow 
will pass, but that the glory is fadeless. 

And to us in England, how deep is the debt we owe 
them. King and people alike. They have drunk the 
cup of bitterness for us. How easy it would have been 
for them to have made craven terms with the bully, to 
have bartered their honour and their liberty for their 
lives and their possessions. And how vast a difference 
that would have made to our task, to the course of the 
war, to the fate of the world, to the liberties of all free 
peoples. It is that thought that makes the loss of 
Antwerp so keen a blow, and leads us to rejoice in that 
last effort of Mr. Churchill to save it. He is assailed for 
that effort by his critics, and it is probably true that in 
this, as in other cases, he went outside the proper func- 
tions of his office. But, putting that consideration aside, 



46 THE WAR LORDS 

Mr. Churchill's action was splendidly justified. He 
saw Antwerp slipping away and heart and brain leapt 
to a call as urgent and imperative as any ever made to 
a nation. The Seventh Division of the British Army, 
which had been commissioned to save Antwerp, was 
delayed. Why it was delayed so long is not yet clear, 
and it may be doubted whether, in any case, it was 
adequate for the purpose. At last it was despatched 
from Southampton, but Antwerp was now nearing the 
last gasp. If it could hold out a few days longer it might 
still be saved; but how was it to hold out ? The army 
was worn out by ten weeks of unexampled struggle 
against overwhelming odds. The early cry of " Where 
are the English ? " had given place to despair and indig- 
nation. The defences of the city, which had been sup- 
posed to be invulnerable, were breaking down. " Why 
should we see Antwerp reduced to ruins ? " was the 
question on many lips. "Every place we have de- 
fended is destroyed. Brussels, which we yielded, is 
saved. Why should we sacrifice Antwerp for those who 
give us no help ? " I believe I am right in saying that 
in that dark hour King Albert stood almost alone. " Hope 
shone in him like a pillar of fire when it had gone out of 
all others." He resisted the appeal of his ministers to 
surrender. But still the English did not come. It was 
at that critical moment that Mr. Churchill gathered his 
little force of Naval Reserve men and threw them (and 
himself) into the breach. It was a forlorn hope. The 
men were raw recruits, ill-equipped, untrained, but they 
were the first visible assurance that Belgium had had 
that she was not deserted. The effect on the Belgians, 
as those who were present on the memorable Sunday 
when the first contingent arrived have told me, was 
electrical. And but for a further delay in the transport 
of the Seventh Division, the miracle would perhaps have 



KING ALBERT 47 

been accomplislied. and Antwerp saved. But the un- 
lucky Seventh Division had been held up at Dover owing 
to fear of mines, and when at last it was on the march 
Antwerp had fallen. Mr. Churchill's effort had failed, 
but it was as wise as it was chivalrous, and when the 
time comes for the story of the fall of Antwerp to be 
written, it will be found that some one blundered, but 
that it was not the man who tried to save it. 

No one doubts to-day that King Albert was right in 
staking everything on the possession of Antwerp, It 
may be that the historian will pronounce a severe judg- 
ment on the Allies for their neglect of Belgium in the 
early phase of the struggle, and that, not on moral, 
but on military grounds. The moral claim was, of 
course, overwhelming. It was the defence of the 
neutrality of Belgium which was the immediate purpose 
of our intervention. But there is a widespread feeling 
that the military claim was equally great, and that had 
Antwerp and the Belgian coast been strongly held the 
position of the German right would have been seriously 
endangered. It was, I understand, the wish of the 
British War Office to send the British Army to Belgium, 
and the advantage of having the Belgian coast as a base 
is obvious. But General Joffre's strategy did not, of 
course, emerge from the interests of either Belgium or 
England. His sole aim was to defeat the enemy, and 
neither moral nor sentimental considerations have ever 
interfered with his action. He wanted to shorten his 
line, and the British Army had to conform to his strategy, 
with the result that the Belgian Army was left unaided 
and Antwerp fell. 

With the capture of that great seaport Belgium ceased 
to exist. But its surrender affected much greater 
interests than even those of Belgium. It was the most 
important success which Germany had had in the war, 



48 THE WAR LORDS 

and it made a profound impression not only on the 
belligerent countries but on the general opinion of the 
world. It was one of the facts which turned the scale 
in Turkey, where the peace party in the ministry were 
engaged in resisting the attempts of Enver Pasha to 
involve the country in the war on the side of Germany. 
The military consequences of the fall of Antwerp were 
as serious as the political consequences. The menace 
to the German flank had vanished, and the enemy were 
free to extend their line to the Belgian coast and to use 
Zeebrugge as a submarine base for the coming " block- 
ade " of the British ports by submarine. Antwerp, in 
fact, became, in Napoleon's phrase, a pistol held at the 
head of England, a grave obstacle to the ultimate 
advance of the Allies and an immense asset for Germany 
to bargain with in the final settlement. 

From that moment King Albert was a king without 
a country, but in losing all he had won immortality and 
the assurance of ultimate victory. Henceforward he 
and his people constituted the first charge on the cause 
of the Allies. We have to save civilisation; but above 
all, first of all, we have to resurrect the country that 
lies bleeding across the Channel, almost within sight of 
our shores. Belgium has died for freedom, for our 
freedom, for the freedom of the world. Let us see that 
she rises again triumphant from her tears and ashes. 
And if righteousness endures beneath the sun, she will 
rise. 




Geneml Jofire 



GENERAL JOFFRE 

AND THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE 

It is more interesting to know what your enemy says 
of you than what your friends say. It is even more 
important. For the aim of your friend is to shield 
you: the aim of your enemy is to unmask you; and 
though he may be unscrupulous and mendacious in the 
task he will help you to a truer understanding of your- 
self than all the adulation of your friends, just as most 
of the savage caricatures may be more revealing than 
the most flattering portraits. 

Now the enemies of General Joffre call him " General 
Two-divisions-short-and-Two-minutes-late." It sounds 
a formidable indictment. If we accepted it au pied de 
la lettre, there would seem to be nothing more to be said, 
for it would predicate the most complete incapacity for 
generalship that could be conceived. But while the 
phrase reflects a certain truth, it reflects it only as the 
distorting mirror reflects the human form, preserving 
a sort of grotesque likeness in the midst of its wild 
exaggerations. The truth which is caricatured may be 
best expressed by trimming the name to that of General 
Caution. That, stripped of its mahce, is what the 
phrase means. It means that, in the opinion of his 
critics, General Joffre's caution is excessive, that he 
avoids risks that ought to be taken, that he allows 
opportunities that ought to be seized to pass without 
profit, that, in the language of Scotland, he is " gey slow 
in the uptak'." 

49 D 



50 THE WAR LORDS 

It is an arguable view on which time alone can 
give the final judgment. General Joffre would himself 
probably admit that he is as cautious a general as 
ever played a great part on the stage of war. The 
famous phrase attributed to him, about " nibbling " at 
the enemy (" Je les grignotte "), expresses very truly 
the spirit of his policy. It is not merely that his genius 
is static rather than dynamic ; it is that his temperament 
is severely serious and untheatrical. There is a common 
disease in these days which one may caU Napoleonism. 
It afflicts a certain type of person of great executive 
capacity and boundless ambition, but little moral ballast 
or social conscience. It is a very dangerous disease, and 
any one who surrounds himself with busts of Napoleon 
is prima facie suspect. 

From this disease no one is more entirely free than 
General Joffre, and among the few sayings attributed to 
him there is none more revealing than that which relates 
to Napoleon. Some one had said to him that Napoleon 
himself could not have got through the German hnes. 
" I think," he said reflectively, " that Napoleon would 
have found a way somehow." That is the right sort 
of modesty — the modesty of a man who is big enough 
to avoid vain comparisons and to stand soHdly on his 
own ground. It was said of Campbell-Bannerman, of 
whom, allowing for differences of race and training, he 
is reminiscent, that he had talked less nonsense than 
any man of his time. General Joffre not only talks no 
nonsense: he thinks none. His habit of mind is plain 
to pedestrianism, and his view of his profession is as 
practical as that of a plumber. No one could be more 
remote from the military tradition of his country. The 
tradition of France is the tradition of the romance of 
war just as the tradition of Prussia is the tradition of 
the business of war. Frederick the Great prided himself 



GENERAL JOFFRE 51 

on the fact that, while his French opponent took the 
field with a hundred cooks, he took the field with a 
hundred spies. Even Napoleon, though no more forget- 
ful than Frederick of the business of war, knew how 
to exploit its " glory " and to fire his soldiery with 
histrionic appeals to their imaginative and romantic 
sense. 

Now General Joffre, although he was born in the hot 
South, is as dour as a Scotch elder, as unemotional as 
Wellington or Washington. There is, I think, only one 
recorded address by him to his army. It was that which 
he made when, after the famous retreat from Charleroi, 
his army had taken up the position on the Marne. It 
was the crisis of the war, and Joffre spoke the one public 
word that has fallen from his lips. It was characteristic 
in its directness and brevity. " You must be prepared 
to die rather than yield ground. Weakness will not be 
tolerated." 

This phlegmatic, undemonstrative temper is significant 
of much. It shows that General Joffre is not out for 
popularity, has no Napoleonic designs. That, as will 
be seen later, is a fact of profound importance. It is 
significant, too, of the change that has come over the 
whole spirit and method of war. The art of war is 
governed by the material of war, and the discoveries 
of recent years have revolutionised the conception of the 
art. The element of surprise has vanished with the 
use of the ^eroplane,| wireless, and the telephone. The 
wonderful Ulm-Austerhtz campaign of Napoleon would 
have been impossible with the conditions of to-day. 
Equally impossible would have been Stonewall Jackson's 
march by the plank road that won the Battle of Chan- 
cellorsville, or his brilliant exploit at Thoroughfare Gap. 

We have seen again and again, in the course of this 
war, how difficult it is, even with the most rigorous 



52 THE WAR LORDS 

suppression of news, for a commander to effect a vital 
movement in secret, unless one side has an overwhelm- 
ing advantage in military railways as is the case with 
Germany on the Polish frontier. The transfer of the 
English army from the Aisne to Flanders was carried 
out with the most elaborate precautions; but in vain. 
The Germans were there as soon as the British. More- 
over, the enormous development in artillery has not 
only made the fortress obsolete, but has changed the 
character of fighting in the open from a swift clash of 
infantry and cavalry to a slow struggle for entrench- 
ments. Add to all this the gigantic scale of the armies 
and the vast line of battle, and it will be seen that the 
art of generalship has fundamentally changed. You 
could walk over the field of Waterloo in a morning, but 
it would take you many weeks to walk over the field of 
battle that extends from the Vosges to the Yser. When 
Napoleon ordered the advance of the Imperial Guard 
at Waterloo, he had the whole field of battle and all 
the conditions in view; but the French advance at 
Soissons in March was only part of a scheme which 
included the English advance at Neuve Chapelle, a 
hundred miles away, and considerations as remote as 
the situation in Alsace and Hindenburg's new lunge at 
Warsaw from the north. The corollary of this is that 
the commander is no longer a personality, but an abstrac- 
tion—not a visible inspiration, but a thought working 
in some remote background, with maps and telephones, 
aeroplanes and wireless. General Joffre's greatness is 
shown in his appreciation of the new conditions, and his 
stern rejection of the old ostentation of generalship 
which was proper to " a creed out-worn." 

But the main significance of this aloofness and 
sobriety goes deeper than this. The temper of General 
J offre reflects a profound change in the spirit of France. 



M 



GENERAL JOFFRE 53 

Like Lord Kitchener, the French Commander had his 
first experience of war in the tragic year of 1 870, when, 
as a lad from the Ecole Polytechnique, he did active 
service with a battery during the siege of Paris. How 
deeply the iron of that terrible winter burned itself into 
the soul of France is evident in the stress of to-day. 
Every observer agrees in commenting on the changed 
temper of the country, its freedom from excitement and 
alarms, its quiet gravity as of a nation steeled to endure 
the worst blows of fortune. 

How different it all is from the levity of 1870, when 
France danced out gaily to the cry of " a Berlin ! " and 
in a few short weeks saw her armies shattered by a series 
of defeats hardly paralleled in history. Even in the 
midst of that frightful overthrow, the spirit of Paris 
was true to its past. It plunged into a revolution and 
swept away the shoddy structure of Imperialism; but 
even in that thrilling time it mingled a wild and irrespon- 
sible gaiety with its panics and despairs. It laughed 
at its miseries and greeted the surrender of Bazaine 
with a great Boulevard jest : " Bazaine a enfin opere 
sa jonction avec MacMahon! " they said. And in the 
midst of the siege all Paris could make a joke of General 
Trochu and his famous " plan " — that plan which he 
would never reveal, but which was to work a miracle, 
and which he had deposited with his notary. Me. 
Ducloux. The whole city laughed about it, and sang 
songs deriding it thus : 

" Je sais le plan de Trochu, 

Plan, plan, plan, plan, plan! 
Mon Dieu ! Quel beau plan ! 
Je sais le plan de Trochu : 
Grace a lui rien n'est perdu, 

Quand sur du beau papier blanc 
II eut ecrit son afiaire. 



54 THE WAR LORDS 

II alia porter son plan 
Chez maitre Ducloux, notaire. 

C'est 1^ qu'est I'plan de Trochu, 
Plan, plan, plan, plan, plan," etc. 

Bismarck, waiting grimly outside, was sure of his estate; 
but Paris would not be denied its laugh, even though it 
was at its own misfortunes and its own preposterous 
Generals. Perhaps young Joffre joined in the laugh 
too, but he learned the lesson of that gigantic frivolity, 
and France learned it with him. It is to-day the most 
serious nation in Europe. The roles are reversed. It 
is Germany which is filled with boasting and which set 
out with the cry of " a Paris " ; it is France which waits 
the issue, with white lips, perhaps, but with a still 
tongue and a fixed purpose. It has lost its gaiety, but 
it has found its soul. 

And General Joffre is a symbol of the victory. I 
think he is an assurance, too, that France will keep its 
soul. For his importance is not confined to the battle- 
field. Behind the immediate issue of the war of the 
nations are many issues affecting many lands. Who 
shall say what influences will emerge triumphant in this 
country, in Germany, in Russia, in France ? Every- 
where we see new hopes blossoming — nowhere more than 
in France where the school of Clericalist reactionaries, 
Barres, Bourget, Dimnet, and others, are busy antici- 
pating that the war will bring the downfall of the Re- 
public, and that with the army victorious and under 
their control they will at last have the democracy well 
in hand. The political struggle in France has always 
centred in the army, for the Clericalists know that if 
they can possess the army, as the Kaiser and his Junkers 
possess it. Parliament, Hke the Reichstag, will cease to 
be the instrument of power. It was the exposure of the 



GENERAL JOFFRE 55 

Dreyfus conspiracy that prevented the fall of the Re- 
public nearly twenty years ago, but since then the 
attempts to capture the army for the Clerical cause have 
not ceased, and there have not been wanting many 
signs of its success. The restoration of the notorious 
Colonel de Paty du Clam, the anti-Dreyfusard, to office, 
and the revival of military parades in the streets of Paris, 
were not the least significant of these symptoms. 

Through this atmosphere of political intrigue, General 
Joifre has come slowly to the front — a silent, determined 
man, given wholly to his profession, famous as an 
engineer and scientist, having seen service in the East 
and in command of the expedition to Timbuctoo. 
Though not a politician, he was known as a Republican 
and a Freemason, and it was not until the regime of 
General Andre at the War Office had destroyed the 
Clericalist patronage in the Army that he obtained the 
epaulettes of a brigadier-general. When the Council 
of War was reorganised in 191 1, he was made Chief of 
the General Staff, General Pau, who is a well-known 
Clerical, having first refused the post, whether on grounds 
of age only, or because he would not accept the condi- 
tions which accompanied the office, is not quite clear. 
But whatever the cause, the result was that when the 
crisis came a Republican was in command of the Re- 
publican army. 

It is a good omen for France — all the better because 
General Joffre is too good a Republican to allow poHtical 
motives to interfere with his duty to the State. The 
spirit in which he conceives his office, as well as the 
ruthlessness of his hand in dealing with incompetence, 
was revealed soon after his appointment as head of the 
army. France was staggered one morning to learn that 
five generals who had been found incompetent in man- 
oeuvres had been dismissed. The fact that all five were 



56 THE WAR LORDS 

known to be Republicans naturally suggested that they 
had fallen to a Clericalist conspiracy, and public indig- 
nation, passing over General Joffre, seized on his Cleri- 
calist assistant, General de Castelnau, as the culprit. 
But the action was Joffre's, and his alone. He believed 
the men to be inefficient soldiers, and the fact that they 
were Republicans had nothing to do with the case. 
They must go. 

That is the man. Cautious, self-reliant, indifferent 
to applause, careless of criticism, slow to arrive at a 
decision, but, the decision once taken, " fighting it out 
on that line " with the grim tenacity of Grant. " No 
weakness will be tolerated." We see the qualities of 
the man all through the campaign — at the beginning 
his authority menaced by political intrigues, but fighting 
them down with masterful hand and emerging un- 
challenged autocrat of the army; carrying out his 
scheme of retreat to the Marne with inflexible purpose 
and refusing to allow the very considerable victory at 
Guise to modify his plan; avoiding the failures of 1870 
by giving the fatal fortresses a wide berth; allowing the 
whole of Northern France to be wasted rather than meet 
the enemy except under his own conditions; when the 
tide had been checked, never losing his head or sacrific- 
ing his scheme of slow attrition to a theatrical move; 
a man with a long vision, a calm mind, and a will of 
iron — three good things in a man of action. 

Few men in history have been subjected to such an 
ordeal as that which came during the unforgettable 
fortnight that followed the retreat from Charleroi. Day 
by day the tide of invasion swept nearer Paris. The 
Meuse and the Sambre were crossed, the line of great 
fortresses along the frontier was engulfed, wave followed 
wave with seemingly resistless impetus. Each bulletin 
recorded with cold formaHty some new advance. Soon 



GENERAL JOFFRE 57 

Paris itself heard the guns, and in the woods not far to 
the north of the city patrols of Uhlans were to be seen, 
the first messengers of the coming terror No, not the 
first, for the aeroplanes of the enemy were before them. 
To appreciate the effect of all this, it must be remembered 
that the French public had looked for success, believed 
in the fortresses, knew nothing of strategy. They knew 
still less, if that were possible, of the man who had 
the fate of the country in his keeping. To the Parisians 
he was little more than a name. They had seen his 
bulky figure cantering in the Bois and down the Champs 
Elysees in company with his two step-daughters, but 
only the initiated had seen in him anything more than 
a superior officer of unknown name and rank. Even 
the initiated might have been excused for entertaining 
fears, for what was there in the record of this man to 
give that popular assurance of victory that means so 
much ? 

There was no fact on which to hang a legend, no anec- 
dote that gave a clue to character. Born among the 
mountaineers of Roussillon in the Pyrenees, the son — 
one of eleven children — of a cooper of Rivesaltes, he 
was as remote in tradition and temperament from the 
France of Paris as the fisherman of Loch Erribol is 
from the Englishman of Balham or Putney. His native 
speech was not French, but a dialect akin to the Catalan 
speech on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. He had, 
through his gift for mathematics, got his foot on the 
ladder at the Ecole Polytechnique, and he had slowly 
cHmbed the ladder till now, a man of sixty-three, he was 
supreme. But there was not a sensation or a dazzling 
incident in all his career. Only once (for though he was 
in one of the forts during the investment of Paris in 
1870-71 he saw nothing of the field operations) had he 
been under fire, and that only when he led his little 



58 THE WAR LORDS 

column of 400 men (chiefly natives) through 500 miles 
of desert and wilderness by the Niger to Timbuctoo and 
overcame the warlike tribes of the Touareg. It was a 
remarkable achievement, as a perusal of his very simple 
unaffected story of My March to Timbuctoo will show. 
But it was a small apprenticeship for the command of 
miUions. Nor was there anything peculiarly attractive 
in his personahty to distinguish him. He had no gift 
of words, and no arts of the adventurer. He was said to 
be lazy, and his entire lack of showy quaHties made his 
progress incomprehensible to people who had known him 
superficially, and who, judging from externals, saw httle 
in him. It was only those who knew this silent enigma 
intimately and were able to see behind appearances who 
understood his worth — his incomparable common sense, 
his cool judgment, his essentially scientific and practical 
genius, his strength of will which would have been a 
dangerous obstinacy had it not been informed by such 
a spacious understanding of the factors involved and 
such a decisive instinct for the essentials of a situation. 

But Paris knew nothing of this. It only heard vague 
rumours of that great defeat to the east near Metz, only 
saw the French army in the north retreating, almost 
in flight, day by day, only felt the doom approaching 
with frightful swiftness. The faith in Joffre, unsus- 
tained by knowledge of the man, was vanishing. Was 
he after all only another Bazaine ? It was a moment 
when the artist of war would have made a dramatic 
stroke at all costs " to stop the rot." In the mood of 
the pubUc and of the army this appearance of over- 
whelming disaster might be instantly fatal to him. And 
it was in this mxoment that Joffre showed that France 
had found the man she needed. It is said, I do not know 
with what truth, that he was opposed to the earlier 
strategy of the war. Certainly that strategy does not 



GENERAL JOFFRE 59 

accord with all that we know of the cautious temper 
of the man. It had in it an element of recklessness, a 
subservience to political aims, that contrasts strikingly 
with all that has happened since. Being inferior both 
in numbers and equipment the French were in no position 
to take the offensive, yet they took the offensive in no 
fewer than three directions — in Alsace against Miil- 
hausen, in Lorraine against Metz, and against the Ger- 
man centre in Luxemburg, upon which 500,000 men were 
flung. The result was disastrous. On August 20th, 
the French suffered a severe defeat near Metz, and on 
the 22nd the attack on the German centre had collapsed. 
Meanwhile Namur fell, and on the Sambre the French 
and British left felt the shock of the German offensive 
through Belgium, and on the 23rd were in full retreat 
from the line Charleroi-Mons. The failure of the French 
centre has been explained with ruthless frankness in the 
official French record of the war. It was due to " indi- 
vidual and collective failures, imprudences committed 
under the fire of the enemy, divisions ill-engaged, rash 
deployments, precipitate retreats, premature waste of 
men, the inadequacy of certain troops and the incom- 
petence of their leaders in the use of both infantry and 
artillery." It is a terrible indictment, and the failure 
in generalship led to a complete change in the chief 
commands. But can it be doubted that the fundamental 
mistake was in the strategy which squandered an inferior 
force on a series of daring offensive movements ? It is 
hard to beHeve that the cautious Joffre was the author 
of that scheme. It has much more the stamp of pohtical 
expediency than of that calculating prudence that is 
the characteristic of the commander-in-chief. 

But whatever the truth about this, the authentic 
Joffre emerged with the great retreat. That revealed 
a man with the rare courage to do an unpopular thing 



6o THE WAR LORDS 

in circumstances of unprecedented trial, and to do it 
unflinchingly. The brilliant thing had failed, whether 
it was his own or another's : now he needed the higher 
courage to do the thing that looked to waiting Paris 
like complete disaster, and to do it thoroughly. Step 
by step he gave France up to be ravaged and desolated; 
night by night he issued his bulletin that told the truth 
to the anxious citizens — told it without one word to 
qualify its terrible import. Then, on the position he 
had prepared on the Marne, with his hidden reserve at 
hand, with the enemy's communications dangerously 
extended, with his own line resting on Paris and Verdun, 
he called the halt and issued the most momentous order 
in the history of war. And from that day the cause 
of the Allies was slowly retrieved. The strategy that 
wrought the change was not original. The lessons of 
1870 had been learned, and the doctrine of the retreat 
had been much discussed. But the discussion of that 
doctrine was one thing: the capacity to carry it into 
effect with steady disregard of all the sentiment to the 
contrary and amidst all the agitations of that terrible 
time was the achievement of a man of rare genius, but 
still more rare character. It discovered Joffre to France, 
and gave it that confidence in his generalship that has 
never since been questioned. 

Fortunate for France that, the most celebrated French 
soldier since Napoleon, he is free alike from Napoleonisra 
and Clericalism. For when the war is over he will be 
the supreme figure in the Republic. He will have some- 
thing of the power that General Monk had when the 
sceptre of the great Protector had fallen to the nerveless 
hand of Richard Cromwell and the State was subservient 
to the Army and the Army to its chief. It will be the 
moment for a coup d/'etat, and in that moment France 
will have reason to be grateful that in her supreme 



GENERAL JOFFRE 6i 

necessity her fate was in the hands not only of a great 
soldier, but of a faithful citizen. For the dream of this 
plain son of the mountains, with the frank and kindly 
smile and transparent blue eyes, is not of poHtical power, 
but of loyal service to the Republic, followed by the 
repose of " the peaceful shepherd." He has himself 
confided to M. Arthur Hue, his friend since boyhood, 
what his dream is like. A lover of the country, he looks 
forward to the possession of a small vessel which will 
carry a crew of two, his wife, and a couple of friends. 
On this they will spend the fine weather navigating 
the rivers with no end in view but the enjoyment of the 
beauty of the scenery, the seduction of the sky, the 
freshness of the nights. It is the dream of a wise man 
and a healthy mind. May it soon be realised. 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 

AND THE SPIRIT OF ENGLAND 

I. THE COMING OF THE STORM 

No one who was in tlie House of Commons on August 3 
will ever forget the emotions of that tragic day. The 
storm that had come up from the East had burst so 
suddenly that men were still stunned by its impact. 
Only a fortnight before the sky of Europe had seemed 
cloudless. The murders at Serajevo on June 28 had 
created a momentary sensation and then had been for- 
gotten in the tumult of the domestic conflict that was 
approaching a crisis. That conflict was the final stage 
of the struggle which was foreshadowed by the election 
of 1906, and which began in earnest with the Budget of 
1909. From that episode onwards there had been no 
pause in the hostilities which, with the passing of the 
Parliament Act, had culminated in the long-delayed 
battle over Home Rule. 

At every stage of the conflict the tension increased, 
and in March there occurred the sinister episode of the 
Curragh Camp, which, for the first time for centuries, 
threw the shadow of the sword over Westminster. The 
courage and address of Mr. Asquith had averted the 
immediate peril, but had not decreased the gravity of 
the general situation, and the air was full of the growing 
menace of civil war in Ulster — a menace propagated by 
a section of the press and endorsed by some of the opposi- 
tion leaders. As July advanced Parliament and the 
country alike were absorbed more and more by the drama 

that seemed about to plunge Ireland in rebellion. Every 

62 






THE ASQUITH CABINETS 63 

eye was fixed on Ulster and hardly a glance was cast 
eastwards. An Englishman who was in Berlin during 
the week beginning on July 18 has told me how puzzled 
he was, in that electrical atmosphere, to notice the un- 
consciousness that the English press exhibited of the 
significance of events on the continent. It is true that 
until the middle of that week no attention was paid in 
the London newspapers to the Austro-Serbian situation, 
and it was not until the night of the 23rd that serious 
alarm was really awakened by the news of the ultima- 
tum. The next day the Ulster issue had a rival in the 
public mind, and during the following week it receded 
into the background as the new peril grew with hourly 
significance. Day by day Parliament met under a 
deepening shadow. It knew nothing of the tremendous 
struggle that was going on behind the scenes — the 
struggle subsequently revealed in the thrilling pages of 
the White Paper — but it knew the fate of Europe was 
in the balance, and when, on the Thursday, in answer to 
a question by Mr. Bonar Law as to the situation, Mr. 
Asquith rose and in one brief sentence declared it to be 
" most grave," its mind was prepared for the worst. 

And now on Monday, August 3, it had assembled to 
hear the fate of this country in the general calamity. 
It was a beautiful summer afternoon, and amid the 
silence of the Chamber there could be heard the muffled 
sound of the traffic of the city outside. It was the last 
day of the great peace, and even now, though war had 
already broken out on the continent and the Stock Ex- 
change was closed, London seemed to be occupied with 
its normal activities. Except for the crowds in Palace 
Yard and the unusual throng in the outer lobbies, there 
was little to indicate that the greatest catastrophe in 
history had befallen the civilised world. But inside the 
House the sense of impending doom was like a visible 



64 THE WAR LORDS 

presence. A strange silence pervaded the crowded 
benches, and the ordinary preliminaries seemed like 
the echoes of a dream world that had vanished. Sir 
Edward Grey was manifestly impatient with the delay. 
He sat in the midst of the crowded Front Bench, the 
Prime Minister by his side. His customary repose and 
detachment had gone. He was flushed and restless, 
and at last leaned towards one of his colleagues and 
whispered some urgent instruction. The other moved 
along the Front Bench to the Speaker, who listened to 
his message and indicated agreement, and a minute later 
Sir Edward Grey was on his feet, and for an hour the 
breathless House listened to what Mr. Balfour afterwards 
called the most momentous speech that had been made 
in Parliament for a century. When it was over the 
House knew that a declaration of war against Germany 
was only a question of hours. The chapter of the past 
was closed. The nation was embarked on strange and 
perilous seas. 

It is almost with an effort that we recall to-day what 
we were talking about so furiously when this thing 
came upon us. The word " Ulster " seems to be only 

the echo of 

" Old, unhappy, far-oflf things 
And battles long ago." 

You go into the House of Commons in these days and 
you are puzzled at the strange peace that prevails. 
Gone are all the familiar savageries of question time, 
the fierce debates, the bitter jibes, the scornful laughter. 
Even the habitual indignation of Sir Clement Kinloch- 
Cooke at the wickedness of the Government has sub- 
sided, and Lord Winterton has vanished with so many 
more to other fields. Mr. Lloyd George relates how 
generously Mr. Chamberlain has come to his help, and 
Mr. Chamberlain says how heartily he is in agreement 



m 



^ i ap i . iii >.~ * * i T l — g -nlf i r-ffTiM-Mi iii fT miii Ff ii la m , , 




THE ASQUITH CABINETS 65 

with everything that Mr. George has done. Strangest 
of all is the scene when Mr. Redmond rises and tells of 
the loyalty of Ireland, of the valour of its volunteers, 
and of its readiness to relieve the Government of all 
trouble of defence. There is a storm of cheering from 
every quarter of the House, and it seems as if in a 
moment, at one breath of real danger, at the call of a 
common cause, the Irish question has vanished. 

Never in history has there been such a House of 
Commons. All controversy is hushed and the machine 
works with a swiftness and smoothness that leaves the 
oldest parliamentary hand gasping with astonishment 
at the miracle. If any one rises to ask a question the 
whole House seems indignant. You feel that if he were 
to go much further and attempt to obstruct he would 
be taken out and shot by the unanimous verdict of the 
Chamber. Votes of a hundred millions pass without 
challenge. The railways are taken over by the State 
at a stroke of the pen. Laws affecting the most intimate 
and vital affairs of everyday life are passed while you 
wait — literally while you wait. We are having lessons 
in social legislation that will never be forgotten, and 
Sir Frederick Banbury himself is silent. 

The spectacle that we have witnessed almost daily 
during the early stages of the war is unexampled in the 
annals of Parliament. A Minister rises, introduces a 
Bill, say, for delay in payment of all our debts, or appro- 
priating food-stuffs, or closing public-houses earlier or 
altogether, moves the second reading, sits down. The 
Speaker rises, reads the title of the Bill, adds " Those 
in favour say ' Aye.' . . . The ' Ayes ' have it," and 
descends from the Chair to the floor. The Sergeant of 
Mace advances from the end of the Chamber, bows 
twice, removes the mace, returns to his seat, and the 
House is in Committee. The Chairman of Committee 

£ 



i 



66 THE WAR LORDS 

rises, reads the first Clause — " Those in favour say * Aye ' 
— the ' Ayes ' have it " — reads the second Clause — 
" Those in favour, etc." — and so on to the end, and the 
Bill is through Committee as rapidly as it can be read. 
Back comes the Sergeant, and restores the mace. The 
Speaker resumes his place, murmurs " Say ' Aye '—the 
' Ayes ' have it," and the Bill is through the House and 
on its way to the House of Lords, whence it returns with 
an expedition quite startling to a Liberal Government. 
But indeed there is no Liberal Government to-day. 
There is only one party in the state within and without 
the House. 

II. THE FIRST CABINET 

In surveying the situation in England at the close of 
the first nine months of the war, two features deserve 
attention, not only because of their importance, but also 
because of their unexpectedness. One is the entire 
absence of emotionalism and especially of any tendency 
to Jingoism on the part of the public; the other is the 
remarkable confidence shown in the Government. Both 
proceed in some measure from the one cause. The 
menace is so overwhelming as to leave no room for the 
ordinary extravagances of popular feeling or party 
prejudice. Apart from the licensed perversity of Mr. 
Bernard Shaw, only one sentiment prevails. The 
country is satisfied that it is fighting for its existence 
against the most powerful enemy that ever assailed it, 
and it is satisfied also that the Government is free from 
complicity in the crime that is deluging Europe with 
blood. With the practical good sense that comes with 
a supreme emergency, it avoids alike the sort of popular 
frenzy that characterised the progress of the Boer War 
and the censorious attitude usually adopted towards 
a Government in war time. 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS ^y 

But there is another and more positive reason why 
the Government commands the confidence of the country. 
John Bright used to say that war always destroyed the 
Government that waged it, and the present war may be 
no exception to the rule. But at the end of nine months 
of unexampled trial, Mr. Asquith's Administration seems 
as firmly seated as at any moment in its history. Pitt 
himself did not possess more authority over the public 
mind than Mr. Asquith and his colleagues exercise to- 
day. There are, of course, departmental criticisms on 
such subjects as the contracting methods of the War 
Office and the administration of the Press Bureau. There 
are also the acerbities of Lord Northclifle and the 
Morning Post, chiefly directed in the one case against 
Mr. Asquith and Lord Haldane, in the other against 
Mr. Churchill. But these criticisms do not touch the 
central faith of the country in its rulers. That is abso- 
lute, unquestioning, and wholly unprecedented, and it 
is as marked on the Conservative side of politics as on 
the Liberal. 

If there is an element of surprise in the general satis- 
faction, it must be remembered that the memories of 
the South African War are still fresh in the public mind. 
The history of that war was a record of almost unin- 
terrupted disappointments, military failure, financial 
blundering, false estimates of difl&culties, false methods 
of handling them— all culminating in the humiliating 
scandals revealed by the War Stores Commission. The 
experience of that war was undoubtedly a valuable 
preparation for the struggle that was to come fifteen 
years later. It sent the nation to school, chastened its 
spirit, spread abroad a popular distrust of the cant of 
Imperalism, and led to a searching revision of the 
mihtary system of the country. England entered on 
the European War with a vastly better equipment and 



68 THE WAR LORDS 

in a much saner spirit than could have been the case 
without the lessons of South Africa. Moreover, it must 
not be forgotten that the smooth working of the military 
and financial machine which so astonished the country 
at the beginning of the war was largely due to the 
alarms of 191 1, which prepared the Government for the 
handling of the situation when it came three years later. 

But when every consideration of this sort has been 
admitted, the efficiency of the Government remains a 
matter of general agreement. The boldness of its 
measures, the promptness with which they were put 
into operation, the far-seeing scope of its preparations, 
and the sense of unity and momentum behind its action 
have impressed the nation profoundly and given it a 
feeUng of security which events have done little to 
weaken. The extent to which England has provided, 
not only the material and financial resources of the 
Allies, but their intellectual energy and initiative is well 
understood, and there is in no quarter any disposition 
to refuse to the Government the main credit for the 
satisfactory course of the campaign. 

The capacity of the Asquith Administration in the 
parliamentary and legislative sphere had, of course, long 
been recognised, with enthusiasm on the one side, grudg- 
ingly and of necessity on the other. But success in the 
parliamentary sense did not necessarily predicate success 
in the wholly different tasks of war — might indeed fore- 
shadow unfitness for those tasks. And yet familiarity 
with the dominating personalities of the Cabinet could 
hardly warrant any disquiet on the subject, for those 
personalities have throughout been conspicuous as men 
of action and of swift adaptibility to new conditions and 
new problems. It is no reflection upon the general level 
of the Cabinet, which is unusually high, to say that its 
force, inspiration, and direction proceed from five only 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 69 

of the twenty members. These five consist of the Prime 
Minister, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. 
Churchill, and Lord Kitchener. One might be tempted 
to add a sixth in the person of Mr. Harcourt were it not 
that his achievement always seems incommensurate 
with the sense of latent power that he conveys. He 
made his first speech in Parliament as a Minister of the 
Crown, and expectation has waited on him patiently 
for some demonstration of his father's masterful influ- 
ence; but it has waited so long in vain that it is disposed 
to leave his doorstep. But, though he has made little 
impression on the country, and, indeed, seems indifferent 
to popular reclame, he carries into the Cabinet a personal 
force and a subtlety of mind that are never neglible. He 
may be paired with Lord Haldane— an old foe of his in 
the days of the Boer War— who with equal subtlety of 
mind and much more activity in public also just fails, 
in spite of his enthusiasm for the doctrine of " efficiency,'' 
to be a first-rate influence on events. 

From the five members who may be said to constitute 
the driving power of the Government, Lord Kitchener 
may be momentarily detached. He is the soldier, sans 
fhrase, who has been introduced into the Cabinet for 
the emergency and on entirely technical grounds. The 
remaining four divide themselves temperamentally into 
two widely different groups. Mr. Asquith and Sir 
Edward Grey are typical productsof the Balliol of Jowett's 
great day— contemptuous of display and rhetoric, avoid- 
ing all demagogic appeals to popular emotion with a sort 
of academic horror of vulgarity; given to understate- 
ment rather than overstatement of their case; dis- 
trustful of the idealist and placing their feelings under 
a ruthless intellectual discipline; commanding respect 
for their high qualities of character rather than affection 
for the warmth of their human sympathies. Mr. Lloyd 



70 THE WAR LORDS 

George and Mr. Churchill, on the other hand, are as 
popular as music-hall artists, men who love the platform 
and delight in intimate intercourse with the crowd who 
rejoice in action rather than in speculation, respond much 
more readily to emotional impulse than to theory, and 
approach every issue with an empirical courage that is 
indifferent to tradition. 

It will be obvious from this contrast, that while Mr. 
Asquith and Sir Edward Grey are the steadying power 
of the combination, their two colleagues are the sails 
that give it volition. It is not the least of Mr. Asquith's 
merits that he has been able to attach to himself and 
to retain the loyalty of men of such startlingly different 
habits of mind from his own. The fact is largely due 
to his remarkable freedom from the vices of egoism and 
personal ambition. No one ever came to power with 
less individual assertiveness or in a more personally 
disinterested spirit. His temperament is naturally 
easy-going and a little flaccid. He does not care who 
gets the popular applause so long as the work is done; 
but he would rather that it was not himself, for he has 
as little passion for the mob as Coriolanus, or, to take 
a modern example, the late Lord Salisbury. To some 
extent, no doubt, his reticence is due to a certain shyness 
which often assumes a protective shield of cold indiffer- 
ence. That, behind the rather frigid public exterior, he 
cultivates the sensibilities is known to his friends and 
has more than once been revealed to the public. He is 
the only man I have seen break down in the House of 
Commons under the stress of emotion. It was on the 
occasion when he announced the final failure of his 
efforts to bring about a settlement in the memorable 
coal strike of 191 1. And no one who heard his noble 
tribute to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman could doubt 
either his sympathy or the candour of his mind. For 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 71 

during the Boer War his relations with Sir Henry had 
been extremely strained, and when he took ofhce under 
him he shared the general distrust of the Liberal Im- 
perialists in regard to one whose simplicity of manner 
concealed from them the essential greatness of his 
character, and whose loyalty to a very plain faith was 
easily mistaken for a phlegmatic obstinacy. 

It is the accident of events that has made Mr. Asquith 
the pilot during the most stormy period of British politics 
for certainly a century. He is himself, by temperament, 
the least adventurous of statesmen. His quality is 
intellectual rather than imaginative, and he is con- 
genitally indisposed to pluck the peach before it is ripe. 
At no time in his career has he forced issues on the 
public. He is content to leave the pioneering work to 
those who like it, and prefers to make his appearance 
when the air has been warmed. It would be wholly 
wrong to assume from this that he is an opportunist, or 
that he is governed by the motions of the weathercock. 
Nothing, indeed, could be further from the truth. It 
is simply that he is neither an adventurer, nor a political 
gambler, nor an idealist ; but a plain politician interested 
only in practicable things and a little indifferent to 
dreams, even though they are on the point of becoming 
reahties. But once engaged, his mind works with 
unequalled power. All the resources of the most 
capacious intellect that has been placed at the service 
of Parliament since Gladstone disappeared are brought 
into play with an economy of method, a startling clear- 
ness of thought, and a passionless detachment of spirit 
that give him an unrivalled mastery of the House. 
" Bring me the sledge-hammer," whispered Campbell- 
Bannerman on one occasion to his neighbour on the 
Government bench, and Mr. Asquith was brought. His 
approach to the dialetical battle is like the massive 



72 THE WAR LORDS 

advance of an army corps, just as Mr. Lloyd George's 
approach, is like the swift onset of a cavalry brigade. He 
has himself expressed his agreement with Pitt that the 
highest virtue of statesmanship is patience, and few men 
have shown a more abundant supply of that virtue in 
trying situations. His philosophy of " Solvitur amhu- 
lando^^ is often dangerously like a philosophy of Drift. 
His tolerance of the Ulster conspiracy more than once 
tested the faith of his supporters, and in the midst of the 
passions aroused by the passage of the Parliament Act 
I saw him for nearly an hour vainly endeavouring to 
speak while Lord Hugh Cecil and the young Tories howled 
at him like wolves, and throughout all that unparalleled 
insult he stood with a certain cold scorn, but without 
one word of anger escaping his lips. He would not 
stoop even to characterise such an outrage. 

But there is one thing that moves him to passion. He 
has the soul of the lawyer — the reverence for the bond, 
for constitutional precedent, for international law, for 
the sacred word of nations. He touches greatness most 
when he is asserting some abstract principle of govern- 
ment, as, when replying at the Albert Hall to some airy 
remark of Mr. Balfour that a question of taxation was 
only a pedantry, he said : " A pedantry ! But it was for 
pedantries like these that Pym fought and Hampden 
died." And no one who heard that tremendous 
impeachment of Germany on the day following the 
declaration of war can ever doubt the fierce passion for 
fundamental things that blazes beneath this drilled 
and disciplined exterior. 

Mr. Asquith, indeed, is a man whom the emergency 
has always found adequate to the occasion. His 
natural tendency to laisser-faire, his habit of never 
facing a thing until it becomes imminent, give the 
impression of want of force, of lack of fire and flame. 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 73 

of intellectual indifference to the issue. But in the 
moment of crisis he envelopes a situation with a sudden 
and masculine authority that has had no parallel in the 
House of Commons in this generation. It was so in 
the case of the famous Curragh Camp episode. A 
position had been allowed to develop of the gravest 
menace, not only to the Government, but to the authority 
of Parliament over the army. The War Secretary had 
had to resign, the head of the General Staff had refused 
to continue in office, and the Government seemed in 
imminent peril. Then, without, I believe, consulting 
any one, Mr. Asquith came down to the House and an- 
nounced that he himself would take the War Secretary- 
ship. It was a master stroke that changed the situation 
in a moment, and the scene that followed — the thrilling 
shout of triumph on the one side, the visible rout on the 
other — was as memorable as anything in the annals of 
Parliament. Among the many German miscalculations 
in regard to England there was none more disastrous 
than the misunderstanding of Mr. Asquith. He is slow 
to anger, but, his indignation aroused, there is in him 
a concentrated passion and a sense of power that give 
extraordinary impetus and weight to his onset. And in 
their open repudiation of law and honour among nations 
the Germans in his eyes outraged the very ark of the 
covenant. 

If Mr. Asquith's intellectual mastery of the House is 
supreme. Sir Edward Grey's influence is not less remark- 
able as a triumph of character. In many respects his 
equipment is undistinguished. He has travelled little — 
it is jocularly said that he paid his first visit to Paris 
when he accompanied the King there a short time ago — 
he is not a linguist, he is wholly insular in his tastes, 
almost unknown in society, much more devoted to fish- 
ing than to politics, speaks little and then in the plainest 



74 THE WAR LORDS 

and most unadorned fashion, is indifferent to the cur- 
rents of modern life and turns for his Hterature to the 
quietism of Wordsworth, Walton, and White's Selborne, 
is rarely seen in the House, and then seems to stray in, 
as it were, like a visitor from another planet. And in 
spite of all this, he exercises an almost hypnotic influ- 
ence on Parliament. The detachment of his mind, the 
Olympian aloofness and serenity of his manner, the 
transparent honesty of his aims, his entire freedom from 
artifice and from appeals to " the gallery," all combine 
to give him a certain isolation and authority that are 
unique. His speech has the quality of finality. Mr. 
Asquith wins by the directness and weight of his intel- 
lectual resources; Mr. Lloyd George by the swiftness 
and suppleness of his evolutions. Sir Edward Grey 
wins by his mere presence, and the sense of high purpose 
and firmness of mind which that presence conveys. He 
is more advanced in his views and more popular in his 
sympathies than his manner and speech convey; but 
in his conduct of Foreign Affairs he has adopted a 
reticence towards Parliament which has been resented, 
notably in the case of the Russian Agreement of 1907, 
which was published two days after the parliamentary 
session had closed, and also in regard to the nature of 
the military " conversations " with France first dis- 
closed to Parliament in the speech of August 3 last. 

It was a disaster that in the fateful years which led 
up to the war Germany was represented in England by 
Count Metternich, whose supple and disquieting man- 
ner, full of Machiavellian suggestion, clashed unpleas- 
antly with the direct and simple habit of Sir Edward 
Grey. Neither could understand the other. Sir Edward 
could not get behind that elusive exterior, and Metter- 
nich could not understand that such plainness as Sir 
Edward Grey's was anything but a cunning disguise. 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 75 

A change came when Baron Marschall von Bieberstein 
superseded Metternich, and when a Httle later (on the 
Baron's death) Prince Lichnowsky came with his gentle 
manner and obvious frankness of purpose. It seemed 
then, especially with the successful co-operation of 
England and Germany during the Balkan Wars, that 
the danger-point in the relations of the two peoples was 
passed, and Sir Edward Grey was clearly moving with 
strong hope towards an understanding with Germany. 
His efforts for peace during the last fatal week of July 
are on record, and no one who saw him in the House 
during those thrilling days can doubt either his surprise 
at the sudden blow or his passionate desire to save 
Europe from the coming disaster. When some one met 
him after his speech of August 3 and rather ineptly 
offered his congratulations he turned away with the 
remark, " This is the saddest day of my life." I am 
told that at the Cabinet Council next morning more 
than one minister broke down under the dreadful strain, 
and that Sir Edward Grey was among them. But, 
indeed, there were more tears shed in England in those 
tragic days then ever before. And they were not tears 
of weakness, but of unspeakable grief. 

If Mr. Asquith is the brain of the Cabinet and Sir 
Edward Grey its character, Mr. Lloyd George is its 
inspiration. No matter what the wave that rolls in, 
he is always on its crest. He is light as a cork, swift 
as a swallow, prompt as a tax-collector. There is the 
magic of genius about this glancing, wayward, debonair 
Welshman who, with nothing but his own native wit 
and dauntless courage — his sling and his stone, as it 
were — has stormed the seats of the mighty and changed 
the whole current of British politics. For ten years the 
fiercest battle in modern political annals has raged 
around his crest. All the forces of wealth, influence. 



-](> THE WAR LORDS 

society, and privilege have been mobilised for his sup- 
pression, for with a true instinct they have seen in his 
agile mind, his far-reaching aims, and his unrivalled 
influence over the democracy the supreme peril to their 
interests. And at the end of the breathless struggle, 
when the country is fighting for its very existence, his 
fiercest foes are loudest in his praise, and the city 
bankers are, half in jest, but half in earnest, suggesting 
that his services should be rewarded with a dukedom. 
The secret of this unprecedented career is not obscure. 
He is the first real expression of the supremacy of the 
democracy. Other men have interpreted democracy 
from without, philosophically, objectively; but here 
is one who comes hot from its very heart, uttering 
its thoughts in its own language, feeling its agonies 
and aspirations with passionate sympathy, making 
them vivid and actual with the glow of his mind 
and the swift imaginative illumination of a poetic 
temperament. All his thought and action come from 
his direct experience of life. No man of distinction 
ever carried less impedimenta, or was more free from the 
domination of the past or the thought of other minds. 
He lives by vision, not thought ; by the swiftness of his 
apprehension, not by the slow correlation of fact and 
theory. If he wants to introduce a shipping bill he takes 
a voyage to study the life of the sailor at first hand; if 
he wants to know about coal-mining he goes down a coal- 
mine; if he wants to know what is wrong with casual 
labour he mixes with the crowd at the dock gates in the 
early morning to hear with his own ears and see with 
his own eyes. It is this directness and actuality, this 
independence of all theory and doctrine, that give him 
his astonishing volition. He is not encumbered with 
precedent, but leaps to his own conclusion and flashes 
to his own goal, careless of all the criticisms of the 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 77 

learned. He takes his sympathies for his counsellors, 
and leaves political doctrine to the schoolmen. It 
follows that his direction is incalculable. It follows, 
also, that he is least convincing and least convinced 
when his case rests on a statement of theory. For 
example, he has made the most brilliant series of political 
speeches delivered during the past fifteen years, but 
though the fiscal issue has been one of the prominent 
subjects of discussion I cannot recall one really weighty 
contribution that he has made to the Free Trade case. 

There is, of course, a peril in this empiricism. It is 
the source at once of the glamour that invests his move- 
ments and the nervous expectancy with which those 
movements are watched. He is as baffling as quick- 
silver which is here and there, and everywhere and no- 
where. But he has two safeguards. The first is his 
real passion for the people. With all his success and 
all his wanderings into high places, his heart is un- 
travelled. It turns unfailingly to the little village 
between the mountains and the sea from which he 
sprang, and to the old shoemaker uncle who watched 
over his childhood and taught himself French that he 
might pave the way of the boy to the law, and who still 
hves to marvel at the man who has made a sounding 
board of the world. That love of the people, sincere 
and abiding, is his saving grace. It is the only anchor- 
age of that extremely mobile and wayward personality. 

And, in the next place, he is not unconscious of the 
peril of the quality which is at once his strength and his 
weakness. He has no petty vanity, and though he does 
not go to text-books he goes to men. On every subject 
as it arises he gathers round him the best expert minds 
available, thrashes out the problems over the breakfast 
table, in committee, on the golf-links, everywhere, and 
with his easy accessibility to ideas arrives at conclusions 



78 THE WAR LORDS 

which are usually informed and practical. It is this 
practice which makes the giddy and daring path that 
he has followed so secure and so triumphant. And it 
is this practice also which, during this crisis, has made 
him the idol of his former enemies. The nation was 
confronted with an incalculable financial disaster. A 
timid man hedged round with academic restraints would 
have brought the city to ruin. Mr. Lloyd George seized 
the situation with the imaginative courage of a creative 
mind. The old foundations had gone. He had to 
extemporise new ones on the spot, and it was a task 
suited to his genius. A world in commotion is a world 
in which he is happy, for his passion for adventure is 
then least subject to restraint. Then he can indulge 
his delight in action with the least hindrance from 
severe thought and can drive ahead on the wings of 
impulse. But such volition needs watching. It may 
lead to strange places and stranger companionships. 

Like Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Churchill, too, is essenti- 
ally a man of action, though in his extraordinarily various 
equipment the gifts of abstract speculation and philo- 
sophic detachment are not wanting. No one absorbs 
the atmosphere of a situation more readily than he does, 
or exhales it with more intellectual conviction, or with 
a more assured grasp of underlying principles. But 
though he has a rare power of appeal to the popular 
mind, his sympathies are not engaged, and his interest 
in life is essentially the interest of the man of action 
and adventure. He brings into public life the spirit of 
the eternal boy, curious, eager, egoistic, intense. His 
career has been an astonishing hand-gallop through 
every realm of experience, war, literature, journalism, 
pleasure, travel, politics, and it is a source of unceasing 
wonder that with this furious activity of living he has 
been able to accumulate such stores of ordered thought, 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 79 

such an air of statesmanlike authority, such mastery 
of the whole instrument of pohtical hfe. But through 
this versatihty there runs always the outlook and spirit 
of the soldier, and he translates all the terms of politics 
into the strategy of the battlefield. His vision is pictur- 
esque and dramatic, and if in the drama of his mind he 
sees himself a colossal figure touching the skies it cannot 
be denied that his gifts are equal to his ambitions. He 
is more admired than trusted, for his amazing energy 
and impetus are felt to be the instruments of a purpose 
which is wayward, personal, and autocratic. But if 
on questions of poHcy he is regarded with disquiet, 
in the executive field the powers of his mind, the swift- 
ness and directness of his vision, and the spaciousness 
of his understanding are invaluable ; and it is recognised 
that to his years of breathless activity at the Admiralty 
the wonderful preparedness of the Fleet for the great 
emergency that has come is largely due. His impetus 
of m.nd is a great asset, but it needs a powerful con- 
trol, and there is a widespread view that Mr. Asquith's 
methods leave him too much latitude for independent 
action. 

The part which Lord Kitchener has played has been 
purely executive. His introduction to the Cabinet 
marked a new departure which was disliked by Liberals, 
but which was based on the wholly unprecedented situa- 
tion. Lord Kitchener is a legend of strength and 
efficiency. The extraordinary dominion he had over 
the popular mind was in itself an asset of the first 
importance. If Kitchener was there, it was all right. 
If Kitchener wanted more men — well, more men there 
must be. It would be an interesting study to examine 
the growth of the legend and the materials out of which 
it has been fashioned. There are those who regard it 
as an interesting myth. Certainly the main credit for 



8o THE WAR LORDS 

the extraordinary smoothness and rapidity with which 
the Expeditionary Force was despatched belongs not 
to Lord Kitchener, whose arrival on the scene was too 
late to influence the arrangements, but to the war 
machine created by Lord Haldane, who, for his reward, 
has been openly assailed in the Conservative press as a 
pro-German who ought to be out "of ofhce if not in the 
Tower. But whatever the future has to say in regard 
to Lord Kitchener as an administrator, there is no doubt 
as to the overwhelming value of his prestige, and the 
admirable loyalty with which, following his unfailing 
practice, he refused to allow his unprecedented position 
to be exploited for political purposes. 

There is no space here to deal with the other members 
of the Cabinet, but something needs to be said on the 
remarkable coherence that has distinguished it. That 
coherence is due to the confidence in Mr. Asquith and 
the spirit of loyalty that is universal in regard to his 
leadership. But for this fact there can be no doubt that 
the Cabinet would have collapsed like a house of cards 
at the shock of the crisis. It came with such appalling 
suddenness, the decision had to be so instant, and it had 
to be made by a Cabinet so passionately averse to war 
that the survival of the Ministry is still a matter for 
wonder. At first, I believe, it is true to say that none 
but the inner Cabinet were clear on the subject, and 
even so late as Sunday, August 2 — a day of almost 
incessant meetings — the dissentients were, if not in a 
majority, at least so numerous and so powerful that a 
coalition Cabinet seemed inevitable. But as the posi- 
tion of Belgium became more clear the opposition 
weakened, and in the end only two members of the 
Cabinet, Lord Morley and Mr. John Burns, resigned. 
It was a surprisingly small disruption in the presence of 
a crisis of such magnitude, and it left the position of 




f Ji^CO C^Ct.jC^c->,.jt,j^^ 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 8i 

the Government practically unaifected. This conveys 
no reflection upon the two dissentients. Neither of 
them has since made any public utterance on the subject, 
and we can only speculate upon the motives of their 
action; but in both cases I think it will be found that 
the causes of disagreement are to be sought in events 
anterior to the immediate crisis, rather than in the facts 
of the crisis itself. In the case of Lord Morley a very 
powerful factor in his decision had undoubtedly no 
relevance to the duty of the country in the matter. He 
was the oldest member of the Cabinet, and for a long 
time his sensitive temperament had chafed under the 
strain and irritations of office. When to the general 
surprise he took a seat in the House of Lords, he did so, 
as he said in a letter to Spence Watson, for two reasons, 
because he found the pressure of life in the House of 
Commons made the fulfilment of the duties of his office 
too severe a task, and because, being childless, there 
was no question of a hereditary peerage. It is probable 
that in any case he would have found himself unequal 
to the strain of office during a prolonged struggle, and 
it was natural that, with his life-long devotion to the 
cause of humanity in its widest and least insular aspects, 
he should not desire to close his pubHc career amidst the 
tumult of universal war. The reasons which operated 
in the case of Mr. Burns are less apparent, and not least 
unapparent to those who know him best. That he was 
definitely opposed to intervention is certain; but it is 
equally certain that there were collateral causes, and 
among them the indisposition, as the first representative 
of Labour who had ever sat in a British Cabinet, to being 
associated with the conduct of a great war. 

It cannot be doubted that the survival of the Asquith 
Ministry practically intact at the time of the crisis was 
a fact of enormous value to the cause of the AUies. 

F 



82 THE WAR LORDS 

There was at the beginning of the war much speculation 
as to the advisability and probability of a coalition 
Cabinet; but this passed away with the progress of 
events and the evidence of the extraordinary efficiency 
of the Government. There were no obvious alternatives 
on the other side to the men filling the chief offices, and 
it did not seem possible for the Conservatives to accept 
simply a number of less important positions. Nor, 
indeed, did they desire office. Freedom from responsi- 
biHty left them free to criticise, and free also from the 
odium which the conduct of a war usually brings upon a 
Government, however efficient and successful it may be. 
It is just to them to say that they have exercised their 
freedom with great restraint. The truce which the war 
has brought about in party pofitics has been, so far, on 
the whole, very fairly observed. There has been no 
attempt to create difficulties for the Government, and 
a general and even generous recognition of their success. 
Moreover, although there has been no official intercourse 
between the front benches there has been much un- 
official consultation. Mr. Austen Chamberlain, who was 
Chancellor of the Exchequer in the last Tory Administra- 
tion, has accepted Mr. Lloyd George's invitation to place 
his experience at the service of the Treasury, and though 
he has preserved his full freedom to criticise, he has, 
with that touch of magnanimity which makes him so 
agreeable a figure in the pubfic fife of the country, 
cordially and even enthusiastically endorsed the mea- 
sures which his successor in the chancellorship has 

adopted. 

As to the attitude of the House generally, it is one of 
almost unquestioning acceptance of the decisions of the 
Government. There has never been such a reign of 
absolutism in the land since the days of Stuarts, and 
the British people, hke Robert Clive, may well be aston- 



.^tewi 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 83 

ished at its own moderation — at the obedience with 
which it has surrendered Hberties which it had thought 
were the breath of its existence, at its whispering humble- 
ness in criticism, at its acceptance of an iron discipHne 
of the press, at the unmurmuring instancy with which 
it gives whatever the Government asks without as much 
as requesting details. " We used to have more bother 
to get a vote for £1000 through committee than we have 
now to get a vote for ^300,000,000," said one of the 
Government whips to me after Mr. Asquith had asked 
for the second vote of credit. It would be a mistake to 
argue from this strange spirit of compHance that the 
country has undergone any loss of its traditions. It 
only means that it is overshadowed by a peril that has 
blotted out temporarily all the ordinary separatisms of 
society, and that there is a universal disposition to avoid 
any spirit of nagging or querulousness, and to trust the 
Government absolutely with its destiny. 



III. THE COALITION CABINET 

The fall of the Liberal Government is as obscure in 
its causes as it was sudden. It did not proceed from any 
gust of pubhc opinion, nor from any sense of failure, 
nor from any serious demand for a Coahtion Administra- 
tion. The confidence of the nation remained unimpaired 
and although the attacks of The Morning Post and the 
NorthcHffe Press upon individual ministers had in- 
creased in bitterness, they did not represent any serious 
body of national thought or any strong movement 
within the House. Mr. Asquith himself was known to 
be averse to a reconstruction of the Cabinet, and only 
a week before it actually took place he said, in reply to 
a question in Parhament, that he saw no reason for such 



84 THE WAR LORDS 

a course, and thought it would not meet with any 
general approval. But undoubtedly forces of disinte- 
gration had been at work. The curious episode in 
relation to drink and munitions had revealed a singular 
contrariety of opinion on the subject within the Cabinet. 
There seems no doubt that Mr. Lloyd George, in raising 
the incident, over-stated the facts as to the effect of 
drink on the production of munitions, and when Mr. 
Asquith went to Newcastle, praised the workmen, de- 
clared that there was no deficiency in the supply of 
munitions, and made no allusion to the drink question, 
the public mind was puzzled by what seemed like a very 
direct conflict between the Prime Minister and his chief 
lieutenant. The situation was not improved by the 
discussions which were known to be proceeding within 
the Cabinet on the method of deahng with the drink 
problem. For a day or two prohibition was in the wind; 
then came State purchase which for a moment seemed 
almost Hke going through; next, as the temperature 
lowered, came proposals for higher taxes on high per- 
centages of alcohol, a scheme which brought Mr. Lloyd 
George into sharp conflict with the Irish. Finally, the 
mountain of discussion brought forth a mouse, or two 
mice, in the shape of a scheme for controlling munitions 
areas and the curious Immature Whisky Bill, which no 
one wanted but which was passed apparently as a sort 
of evidence that there had been something wrong which 
called for some sort of demonstration. All this be- 
wildered the country; but it did not seriously disturb its 
mind. It, however, created an atmosphere congenial 
to change should events develop in that direction. 

And events were not slow to seize the occasion. They 
came in the form of two personal issues, one concerning 
the administration of the army, the other the adminis- 
tration of the navy. The Northcliffe Press, whose 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 85 

agitation had been so largely responsible for the appoint- 
ment of Lord Kitchener, suddenly turned its guns on 
him, and, backed by a message from its military corre- 
spondent at the front, which seemed to have the authority 
of the commander in the field, declared that the wrong 
shells had been sent and that the Cabinet had been kept 
in ignorance by Lord Kitchener of what was happening 
about munitions. Both the manner and the source of 
the attack were deeply resented, but the Opposition 
made it clear that they intended to raise a discussion 
on the facts themselves. That would, of course, have 
meant a formal breach of the party truce. Mr. Asquith 
had two courses open to him. He could accept the 
challenge, stand by his Cabinet, and in the ultimate 
event bring the question of an alternative government 
to the test by resigning, or he could make terms with 
the Opposition and evade what he might regard as a 
dangerous discussion. It is probable that he would 
have taken the stronger hne but for the fact that at this 
moment the conflict between Mr. Churchill and Lord 
Fisher, in regard to the Dardanelles expedition, also 
came to a head with the threatened resignation of the 
First Sea Lord. Faced with the double problem Mr. 
Asquith decided on a reconstruction of the Cabinet on 
coalition lines. 

The new Cabinet represents all parties with the excep- 
tion of the Irish Nationalists. It has exchanged its 
coherence and its familiarity with its tasks for a national 
character the value of which is purely speculative. In 
personnel it can hardly claim to have been seriously 
strengthened. The main elements are still those of the 
first Cabinet, and the changes that have been made have 
not been made with a view to increased efficiency but 
in order to include men whose claims, under the new 
conditions, could not be overlooked. The three most con- 



86 THE WAR LORDS 

siderable personal forces introduced into the Cabinet are 
Mr. Balfour, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Curzon. Mr. 
Balfour is the most fascinating and elusive figure in 
British poHtics. He is the philosopher in affairs and 
has been a conundrum alike to his friends and his foes, 
but never so much a conundrum as when his views were 
so simple that he could put them on half a sheet of note- 
paper. His supreme triumph was in keeping the leader- 
ship of his sundered party for two years without ever 
being betrayed into disclosing on which side of the fence 
he really stood. Such agility, perhaps, has never been 
seen in the egg-dance of pohtics. His dialectical ingenuity 
is a delight to the House, but his grasp of facts is extra- 
ordinarily uncertain, and he dwells in a cloud of specula- 
tive doubt that seems to have no relation to the world 
of action. He had before the reconstruction been 
associated with Mr. Churchill in the work at the Admir- 
alty, and is understood to have been a strong advocate 
of the first expedition to the Dardanelles. Lord Lans- 
downe is a distinct gain to the Cabinet. He has large 
experience of foreign affairs and represents the best 
traditions of that office. He has wisdom, knowledge, 
and sound judgment, and should be of real service to 
Sir Edward Grey in the difficult and complicated 
diplomacy of the Allies. Lord Curzon is the most 
interesting introduction. It is his first appearance in 
a British Cabinet, but his reputation has long been 
estabhshed. He has a powerful mind, great industry, 
and, in the opinion of so good a judge as Lord Morley, 
is the master of the best parliamentary style since Glad- 
stone. His administration in India revealed both his 
virtues and his defects, but the total effect of it was 
disastrous, for it reflected the spirit of Imperialism in 
its most flagrant form, and by its adoption of what 
Fox called the devil's maxim, " Divide et impera,^^ 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 87 

brought the country to the brink of revolution from 
which it has been withdrawn by the wise and liberal 
policy of Lord Morley and Lord Hardinge. 

There are many puzzling things in the composition of 
the new Ministry. The appearance of Sir Edward Car- 
son and Sir F. E. Smith as the law officers of the crown 
furnishes a certain element of ironic relief. A year 
before they were heading the " Civil War " in Ulster, 
and Sir Edward Carson publicly declared his readiness 
to break every law that stood in the way of his purpose. 
The poacher has never before made such a dramatic 
transition to the task of the gamekeeper. Whether the 
law will be able to survive such a triumphant jest may 
be questioned. The retention of Mr. Churchill in the 
Cabinet was a partial victory for him over Lord Fisher. 
At first it was understood that Mr. Churchill would not 
be in the new Ministry, and it was known that his reten- 
tion in any office would mean the retirement of the First 
Sea Lord, who had come to the conclusion that Mr. 
Balfour plus Mr. Churchill was an arrangement no more 
favourable to his control of the navy than Mr. Churchill 
plus Mr. Balfour had been. 

The ffinging of Lord Haldane to the wolves is the 
outstanding scandal associated with the new ministry. 
No doubt his retirement was nominally voluntary, but 
that it should have been allowed to take place was a 
concession to the basest personal campaign that has 
disgraced the war. No man had done more, none, 
indeed, had done so much to prepare the country to 
meet the peril that overtook it last August. It was he 
who refashioned the army and created the great terri- 
torial machine which, had it been properly used by the 
War Office, would have saved the country from the 
waste, confusion, and scandals of the early months. It 
was he who gave the army the general staff and who 



88 THE WAR LORDS 

elaborated that scheme of transport which, in enabhng 
the British army to meet the first onrush of the Germans, 
contributed so largely to saving Europe from an early 
and overwhelming disaster. But he knew Germany, 
had studied its philosophy, had made friends with its 
philosophers, had lunched (as many others, from the 
King to Sir Edward Carson, had done) with the Kaiser, 
had even been to Germany in the interests of peace. 
For all these crimes he was pursued by the rabble of the 
press with a vulgar yelping of " Pro-German." Decency, 
to say nothing of gratitude, it would have seemed would 
have forbidden any surrender to such a squalid crusade. 
We do not know what efforts Mr. Asquith made to save 
his hfe-long friend from being sacrificed. But we know 
that he did not save him. It is an indelible stain upon 
his second Cabinet. 



IV. THE SHIPWRECK 

It is not difficult in these days to understand the 
emotions of that April night in the Atlantic when the 
Titanic went down. Humanity is passing through a 
somewhat similar experience. It has struck a rock, 
and we are all engaged in building rafts — military, 
social, financial rafts — and putting on lifebelts and 
saving any little treasure we can from the wreckage. 
The ship that rode the waves so securely and seemed 
built for all time and all weathers has gone to pieces 
like a house of cards at the touch of universal war, and 
we have to improvise any means we can for keeping 
afloat. Each of us in our several ways is called upon 
to face issues that were undreamed of in that light- 
hearted world we dwelt in but yesterday. 

Things went very well then. We had our troubles, 
no doubt, spoke ill of life and thought we were rather 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 89 

badly used. Shares showed an incurable tendency to 
fall, trade was not what it had been, there was that 
interminable revolution in Mexico — savage, barbaric 
Mexico: so different from our civilised Europe — and 
above all there was the shadow over Ireland, with its 
Gough episodes and its gun-running, to disturb us. But 
the deck was sound beneath our feet, and our private 
sorrows and public discontents did not differ in kind 
from the sorrows and discontents we had learned to 
regard as a normal condition of this strange adventure 
of life. 

Now we are all swallowed up in a common ruin. The 
whole machinery of civilisation has been militarised, 
and from the Orkneys to Japan all the energies of men 
are turned to the task of feeding the flame of war that is 
scorching the face of Europe. The social displacement 
has been so cataclysmal that few of us know what is 
going to happen to us. I do not; you do not. We are 
all adrift together. The professions or trades that we 
have pursued so industriously and perhaps prosperously 
seem to have little relevance to the armed camp in which 
we live, and the soldier is the only man to-day who is 
quite sure that the world of the Christian kings has need 
of him. " The lordHest Hfe on earth " has taken posses- 
sion of the earth and Mr. KipHng may contemplate its 
fruits with what emotion he may. They are many. 
The dead, I read, he so thick in Charleroi that they are 
piled high on the pavements of the streets, " facing 
earth or facing sky," Germans and French and Belgians 
lying still in the great comradeship of death, awaiting 
a common burial. And thousands Hke them litter the 
cornfields of Belgium, the marshes of East Prussia, the 
plains of Sclavonia. They are only the first-fruits of 
the harvest. And the Kaiser telegraphs to the Crown 
Princess, " I rejoice with you in Wilhelm's first victory. 



r 

1.1 



9© THE WAR LORDS 

How magnificently God supported him." Let him 
rejoice. When we have victory let us rejoice also. But 
in the name of that decency which this man outrages, 
let us keep God's name from our hps in our rejoicing. 

But it is not the dead who are the true victims of the 
shipwreck of Europe. It is the living. From Cape 
Grisnez to the Urals there is not a home where the 
shadow of war does not darken the threshold— hardly 
a home where the breadwinner is seen no more. The 
great felled trees lie on the hillsides of the Black Forest 
with none to yoke the oxen and take the shining boles 
down the valleys to the waterways, and in the Dauphine 
the patches of corn that have ripened on the almost 
inaccessible ledges of the mountains stand uncut, for 
the bronzed Dauphinois has gone to another harvest 
field and only the women and children are left to wait 
and hope and fear. And so over the whole face of the 
Continent. The manhood of Europe is on the battle- 
fields and all the sunshine of millions and tens of miUions 
of homes is in ecHpse, and all the fruits of happy indus- 
try are left to rot or are going to feed the monster that 
possesses the earth. 

It seems a Uttle futile, perhaps, to talk about the 
future while we are still stunned and strugghng. You 
are not concerned about the theories of watertight 
compartments when the boat is going down. It is time 
to discuss them when you have got safe ashore. And 
in the same way we cannot think of the causes of the 
catastrophe that has overwhelmed us or of the lessons 
to be drawn from it while we are still in the suck of 
the maelstrom. The time for controversy has not yet 
come — cannot come until the peril has passed and we 
are free to ask questions and quarrel with each other in 
the old jolly way. But in the meantime we are going 
through experiences which will have a profound impres- 



-— -— --^^ 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 91 

sion on human society. When the shipwreck is over 
and we set about rebuilding civihsation the world will 
find itself in possession of a most unsuspected stock of 
ideas. Great movements of thought are always inde- 
pendent of our conscious voHtion. They are driven, 
like the tides, by external stimulus, and the events 
through which we are passing are changing the orienta- 
tion of thought. You cannot go into the House of 
Commons in these days without realising that we are 
passing through an internal revolution as well as a world 
crisis. We have got right down to the bedrock of things, 
and all the nice scheme of special privileges, vested 
interests, private prerogatives, is swept away. The 
individual has gone under. There is only one life, the 
life of the State, that concerns us, and Sir Frederick 
Banbury seems to represent ideas that belong to another 
state of existence. The only political doctrine extant 
is the doctrine of the collective necessity. We are 
discovering that in the face of that necessity we have 
no individual rights or possessions that the State can- 
not resume almost without so much as a " by your 
leave." 

A friend of mine saw a milkman with his horse and 
cart going his rounds the other day in a Midland town. 
The man was stopped by an agent of the Government, 
who ran his eye over the horse, approved it, named the 
price he would give for it, told the owner to take it out 
of the shafts, and forthwith led it away, leaving the man 
with his horseless milkcart to complete his rounds as best 
he could. He had learned rather abruptly the lesson 
we are all learning in our several ways, that in the 
ultimate analysis we own nothing and the State owns all. 
It can take our money to the last penny, it can restrict 
our liberties until we are httle better than prisoners of 
war, it can appropriate our institutions with a stroke 



r 

]-. 



92 THE WAR LORDS 

of the pen, in the final necessity it can take our lives to 
the last drop of our blood. 

We have talked for generations about the nation- 
alisation of railways and have found the scheme too 
vast to tackle. We woke up one morning to find 
that the companies had been dispossessed of their 
control, that the twelve hundred directors had been sent 
out to play, and that the whole railway system of the 
country was subject to the Government. And the 
transition seemed so natural and proper that no one 
even " wrote to the papers about it." At the impact 
of a great occasion the whole theory of railway owner- 
ship and control collapses without a murmur. It is 
seen that the sole ultimate function of the railways is 
to serve the State, and that anything that interferes 
with that function in a time of emergency is brushed 
aside as hghtly as a feather. The lesson will serve for 
future use. By a flash of lightning, as it were, it has 
revealed the true relation of the railways to the com- 
munity, and that relation is as applicable to conditions 
of peace as to conditions of war. 

And so with many other political phases of this extra- 
ordinary time. You may see Parliament constructing 
a new social fabric while you wait — all on a collective 
basis. I can almost hear Mr. Sidney Webb purring as 
he looks on at the swift and silent revolution. War has 
done more in a week or two to bring his ideas into prac- 
tice than the industrious propaganda of years. I went 
into the House of Commons the other afternoon, and in 
the course of half-an-hour I heard a series of Bills rushed 
through their several stages without discussion and 
almost without comment, giving powers to the State 
which in normal times would freeze the blood of Mr. 
Harold Cox. There has never been such a political 
tour deforce in the history of this land. 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 93 

And it is remarkable that whatever the subject, 
the emergency exit is always collectivism. Take the 
question of finance. Walter Besant said long ago that 
the art of banking consisted in taking other people's 
money and using it for your own profit. In a general 
way we knew that the satire was not very extravagant, 
but the system worked and there seemed no real conflict 
between finance which is the symbol and commerce 
which is the reality. 

But the time of stress has brought a swift disillusion. 
It is found that the private control of the sources of 
money supply may have disastrous effects upon industry 
in a crisis — that just when money is most needed for 
trade it may be withheld for private and even selfish 
reasons. Many of the banks behaved well, and others 
behaved badly; but the discovery that any of them 
could hoard not their own money, but other people's 
money, and keep it out of use at a moment when its use 
was the most urgent need of society, showed that the 
present financial system is false. Already the State has 
had to come to the relief of the situation. Mr. Lloyd 
George has given the banks the credit of the national 
Treasury, that is, the security of the whole nation for 
their operations. But obviously the matter cannot rest 
there. If the banks are only institutions for making pro- 
fits for their shareholders in times of prosperity, and close 
their purses when the pinch comes, only opening them 
on our collective security, it is clear that the function 
of the State in the sphere of finance is paramount, and 
that it must exercise that function when times are good 
as when times are bad. 

But it is not only political thought that is being 
changed under the urgent whip of necessity. The whole 
nation is being tempered in the furnace. Touched to 
new issues the world that will emerge will be a world 



94 THE WAR LORDS 

that will be new and strange. There will be a chasm 
between us and our past unlike anything else in history. 
It will be as if generations of normal change have been 
swallowed up in the abyss. The old landmarks will 
have gone; the things that used to seem important wiU 
have become negligible; social relationships will have 
been transformed; ideas that were infinitely remote will 
have burgeoned, as it were, in a night — nothing will be 
quite as it used to be. Humanity will have opened not 
a new chapter, but a new age. It will be like him who 
looked out over 

" a universal blank of Nature's works. 
To him expunged and razed; " 

but it will be a blank upon which we shall write the 
future in new terms and in a new language. 

It would be a profoundly serious world — not serious 
in the sense that it will not recover its gaiety when the 
humihation of this debauch of savagery has passed; 
but serious in the sense of those who have escaped from 
the wreck and have had a blinding revelation of the 
frailty of the structure upon which the fortunes of 
humanity are embarked. We shall hear no more of the 
Cubists and the Futurists, and all the Httle artificial 
cults that used to amuse us with their affectations of 
gravity. They have gone in the general conflagration. 
We shall be concerned not about the decorations of Hfe, 
but about its foundations, and shall have no taste for 
the conflict of the Little-endians and the Big-endians. 
Indeed, they will have no taste for it themselves. 

For the world has gone to a school that will change 
all its scheme of values. Think of it: twenty million 
men, drawn from every great European country and 
from every class of society — from the field and the 
factory, the office, the law-court, the university, the 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 95 

Church — are engaged in the business of slaughtering 
each other as the instruments of some power that they 
do not control, of policies they do not understand, of 
causes too obscure and involved to be unravelled. Day 
by day they see the sodden or frost-bound earth strewn 
with the bodies of their dead comrades or their dead 
enemies. They have no personal animus against those 
enemies. They never met them until now, and in the 
brief moments of truce — as when Christmas came hke 
the ghost of some dream world into their midst — they 
exchanged greetings and tokens and found each other 
just ordinary, companionable men, desiring no revenge 
and no blood, but just wishing to be back to their homes, 
their tasks, and their familiar ways. 

Now these men, who are passing through this tre- 
mendous experience, are not ignorant boors. They can 
read and write; they can think and talk; they can ask 
questions and demand answers. The Russian, it is true, 
is illiterate (to the great joy of the mediaeval soul of Mr. 
Stephen Graham), but even he will not escape the lessons 
of this fierce school. And for the rest, English and 
Germans, French, Austrians, and Hungarians — they 
have the tradition of generations of universal education, 
of industrial organisation, of famiharity with news- 
papers and books and politics. They have gone into 
this hell with the capacity to learn, understand, and 
question. They will not come out as they went in. 
They will return from the war seasoned men and think- 
ing citizens — men who have seen the very skeleton of 
civilisation face to face, the gaunt bones, as it were, 
stripped of all the fair disguises of elaborate social 
distinction and diplomatic pretence. They will come 
back with a new light in the mind and a sense of author- 
ity that they never had before. And they will come 
back with the vote. 



96 THE WAR LORDS 

A new England is being brought to birth in the 
trenches of Flanders. The life of three million men, 
the flower of the nation, is being revolutionised. That 
young man who has gone from the plough will not return 
to the plough on the same conditions. He has made a 
discovery. Up to August last he seemed of rather less 
importance than the cattle in the fields, for they always 
were well fed and well stalled, while his whole life had 
been a struggle with grinding poverty. Suddenly he 
is exalted high above the cattle. He is a person of 
consequence. The statesman, the squire, the parson, 
the magistrate — all become his suitors. He is dressed 
for the first time in good clothes and good boots; he is 
well fed and well housed; he has pocket money; if he 
has a wife and children they are better off than they 
ever were before; if he dies, their future will be assured 
as it would never have been assured had he hved. It 
is all like a miracle. The discovery he has made is that 
when the real emergency comes his life is as valuable to 
the State as any life. And the thought that is dawning 
on him is this : If I am so necessary to the State in time 
of war, the State^ must be just to me in time of peace 
when I am doing its work no less worthily and no less 
vitally than on the battlefield. 

This change of outlook affects the city clerk as much 
as the village labourer. A young man, writing home 
from the front to his parents, concludes thus : " No more 
office work for me." He spoke the thought that is shap- 
ing itself in many minds. There has been a breach 
with the past: new tastes have been acquired, new 
ideas of life and its realities have come to birth, new 
demands for self-expression will issue from thousands 
of Hps. What are we doing to prepare to meet those 
demands — the demands of those, for example, who say, 
" No more office work for me," and who will insist either 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 97 

here or elsewhere on the hfe of the open air and fruitful 
labour? The land question has been blanketed iust 
when It is more urgent than ever—just when we 'are 
realising how true was the dictum of Froude that " that 
State is strongest which has the largest proportion of 
Its people m direct contact with the soil." 

There is another and stiU more fundamental theme 
that will emerge from the shipwreck. In a real sense 
It IS the only thing that matters. We have been Hke 
children playing on the top of a volcano. We have 
busied ourselves with schemes of social reconstruction 
and have flattered ourselves that we were making this 
land a httle better, a Httle happier, a Httle more just 
for the people who dwell in it. We knew no more of 
what was going on inside the volcano than if we were 
dwelling in Mars. But it was there that our fate was 
being fashioned by a small body of diplomatists and 
officials whose very names are unknown to the general 
public, who cannot be heard in pubhc, or examined in 
pubhc, or dismissed by the pubhc. We have discovered 
that with all our constitutional rights, the greatest 
mterest of this country is as much outside our control 
as the revolutions of the solar system. 

Bagehot long ago commented on the anomaly that 
Parliament, which has control over laws, has no power 
in the making of war or peace or of treaties upon which 
the whole existence of the State may rest. Palmerston 
carried the doctrine so far as to say that it was not 
necessary even to communicate with Parliament on these 
things. It was not until twenty-four hours before the 
declaration of war that Parhament and the British public 
learned that for seven years this country had been dis- 
cussing joint mihtary and naval action with France. 
This secrecy is incident to a system of diplomatic relation- 
ship that has remained unchanged in spite of the revolu- 



98 THE WAR LORDS 

tion that has taken place in the real relationships of 
European society. Commerce and finance have become 
international, the credit system has made the world one, 
labour has moved towards the ideal of a world-wide 
sympathy, democracy has estabHshed itself as the vita 
principle of human government, social and inteUectual 
intercourse, influenced by the achievements of science 
which have annihilated space, has become universal— 
everything in short has tended to the foundation of a 
world society motived by common interests and con- 
ducting its affairs with open and honourable directness. 
Only in one sphere has the tradition that we have out- 
grown remained. The peoples have moved towards a 
world fraternity, but they have not carried their govern- 
ments with them, and secret diplomacy has in the end 
wrecked the fabric of human society. Can Europe 
again tolerate that peril ? Can we ever again play about 
on the deck with the sails and the compasses while down 
in the hold there is a powder magazine and a lighted 
match, the very existence of which we are not permitted 
to know ? Secret diplomacy belongs to the traditions 
of personal and autocratic government. It is fatal to 
democracy, and the ultimate decision of the war will 
be whether democracy, with its free and universal air, 
or autocracy, armed with the sword and burrowing with 
secret diplomacy, is to control the destinies of men. 

V. THE LEGEND OF ARCHANGEL 

It is said that when Lord Kitchener made his first 
demand for 500,000 men he beheved that it would be 
futile, and that only conscription would give him the 
army' that he needed. If that is so he gravely mis- 
apprehended the spirit of the country. It rose to the 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 99 

height of the great argument with a passion all the more 
impressive for its freedom from any shallow emotion 
either of jingoism or hate. Those who recall the 
frenzies and vulgarities of the Boer War find it difficult 
to associate them with a people so sober and undemon- 
strative. The spirit with which the sudden peril has 
been met is the more remarkable because, unlike the 
Continental peoples, we are not habituated to the 
presence of the shadow of war. It is more than a 
century since the fear of invasion fell on us, and the 
coming of the terror might reasonably have tried our 
nerves. But the country has kept its head, its temper, 
and its courage. Its spirit is well illustrated by an 
incident which Mr. T. W. Russell related to me — an 
incident which deserves to companion that of the Roman 
mother. He was speaking to a woman whose three 
sons are on battleships in the North Sea, and he ventured 
to speak words of sympathy and comfort to her. " I 
wish I had ten sons," she answered, " and that they 
were all fighting for their country." Our sons will be 
all right while they have such mothers. 

And not the least gratifying feature is the cheerfulness 
with which financial and business disasters, which in 
normal times would seem so overwhelming, are being 
borne. I know men who have been ruined by the crisis, 
whose business is with the Continent, and who have seen 
the fabric of their prosperity collapse into the dust; 
but you would not know it from their bearing. We find 
that we do not worry about the toothache when the 
house is on fire, that material losses count httle when the 
deeper things of life are at stake. The nation is sound- 
ing the great waters, and learning very unusual lessons — 
lessons of mutual dependence, of self-sacrifice, of help- 
fuhiess and tolerance and goodwill. We are not so 
petty as we were yesterday. Perhaps some of us in the 



loo THE WAR LORDS 

early days ran to the banks to get heaps of gold, and 
some to the grocers to buy up sacks of flour, but if so we 
are rather ashamed of the fact and would not care for 
it to be known. But for the most part we are sensible 
and are concerned for once with something bigger than 
the safety of our own skins and the fulness of our own 

pockets. 

But this essential calm does not mean that the country 
is insensible to the dangers that envelop it. It is pro- 
foundly anxious— how anxious is shown by the rumours 
that agitate it with fear or hope. The most wonderful 
of these rumours is the legend of Archangel. In the 
happy future, when the madness has passed and peace 
has returned to the earth, learned men wiU trace the 
legend to its source and reveal the seed of the prodigious 
growth that overspread the world. 

The first indirect allusion to it that I have been able 
to trace was in the first week of the war when, amid the 
breathless secrecy that enveloped all the intentions of 
the War Office, the public mind was chiefly occupied 
with the question whether an Expeditionary Force was 
being sent to Belgium. Among those who were confi- 
dent on this point was a member of a great shipping firm 
in the City. He knew that an Expeditionary Force 
was on its way; but it was not on its way to Belgium. 
To France, then ? No, nor to France. Not to Belgium, 
not to France ? Where, then, in the name of wonder ? 
It was on its way to Russia. And he met the natural 
increduhty with his evidence— the Government had 
commandeered enormous shipping transport for dis- 
patch to Archangel in the White Sea. If it was not to 
carry soldiers what was its purpose ? And if soldiers, 
who but British soldiers ? 

That was probably the beginning. It contained two 
essentials of the legend— the transport of an army and 



i... 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS loi 

the mention of Archangel, Its weak point was, of 
course, the assumption that the Army to be transported 
to Archangel was the British Army. That was still 
incredible, and with the official announcement of the 
landing in France it was finally disposed of. But in 
the meantime a new and more intelligible aspect had 
been given to the stor)^ It was a Russian Army coming 
from Archangel, not an English Army going there. Who 
supplied that final touch of verisimilitude to " a bald 
and otherwise unconvincing narrative " cannot be 
known. Probably it was no one in particular. The 
legend simply grew out of the mystery and intensity 
of those early days. 

It grew in a favourable atmosphere. The capacity 
of the human mind to believe what it wants to believe 
is great at all times. That fact is the basis of all the 
myths of the ages. Looking out on the mystery of the 
wheeling universe, the magic of night and day, the 
pageant of the seasons, the miracle of life and death, 
men have conceived explanatory ideas and have found 
no difficulty in making the facts conform to them. We 
are all more or less subject to this dominion of the idea 
over the facts. W^hen Falstaff described his battle with 
the men in buckram he did not deliberately lie. He had 
a romantic vision of himself as a hero fighting fearful 
odds, and he made the facts worthy of the vision. He 
believed them as George IV. is said to have believed 
that he won the Battle of Waterloo. 

Now at the time the rumour of the Russian Army 
began to fill the air the public mind was in a condition 
that made it peculiarly accessible to an idea that pro- 
mised help. The great war machine of the Kaiser was 
beginning to move, and all the world was awaiting the 
result with anxiety. In this country there was no fear 
of the ultimate issue, but there was much doubr as to 



I02 THE WAR LORDS 

the early course of events, and the hint that immediate 
assistance was possible from another source fell on soil 
wonderfully prepared to receive it. 

And when the first disposition to reject the idea as 
novel and fantastic had passed, it was seen to be neither 
novel nor fantastic. Given the command of the sea, 
the facilities of transport and the supply of men, there 
was nothing impracticable in the scheme. And as to 
its novelty — it was nearly two centuries old. For in 
the reputed will of Peter the Great, which was first 
published in 1749, ^^^ ^^ which very elaborate instruc- 
tions, couched in the spirit of Machiavelli and Bernhardi, 
were left for promoting the greatness of Russia, there 
was the suggestion that at a critical moment two expedi- 
tions should be prepared, one in the Sea of Azov, the 
other at Archangel, and launched against the western 
seaboard of Europe. 

There has never been any rumour like it. We are 
accustomed to suppose that the only medium of news 
in the widespread sense is the newspaper. Travellers 
tell us, it is true, of the astonishing speed with which 
tidings will spread among uncivilised peoples — a speed 
which seems to outstrip any apparent means of com- 
munication and to have almost the fleetness and 
invisibility of the wind. It is a sort of sixth sense which 
sophisticated peoples have lost. But here was a rumour 
that swept the country from John o' Groats to Land's 
End — a rumour that, unlike any other rumour that we 
have known, owed nothing to the suggestion of print. 
For in this amazing time the journalist, whose business 
it is to tell everything he knows and sometimes even 
more than he knows, has discovered a golden gift of 
reticence. He does not need the help of the Press 
Bureau to be as secret as the grave when secrecy is vital. 
And so, while every office was throbbing with the mys- 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 103 

tery there was no hint in the newspapers that they had 
ever heard of such a place as Archangel. 

Meanwhile that blessed word was in every mouth. 
Like the poet, Archangel woke up one morning to find 
itself famous. It became a grievance against the war- 
map makers that they had cut oif Europe just where it 
became really romantic and interesting. They had left 
out the White Sea and the North Cape and the Arctic 
Circle — everything in fact about which we were most 
ignorant and most concerned. For just as the war had 
blotted out the weather as the staple of conversation, 
so Archangel almost blotted out the war. Men must 
dispute about something in this imperfect world, and 
since all the ordinary political topics of controversy had 
vanished, they seized on this fascinating theme for con- 
flict. They fought with the passion of the Big-endians 
and the Little-endians. As on all questions of faith, 
Society became divided into Believers and Unbelievers. 
There was the Pro-Russian party and the No-Russian 
party, the idealists and the realists, stern, unbending 
zealots who would yield no inch to the enemy, and around 
them were the hosts of the Mugwumps, swayed now to 
this side, now to that. 

And aU the while the very air was eloquent with 
evidence. It came from every quarter of the compass 
and in every form of personal witness. There was the 
Glasgow shipowner whose vessels had been mysteriously 
wafted away to the Northern seas, and the mayor of 
the northern seaport who has told a correspondent with 
significant mystery of the arrival of vast consignments 
of butter from Archangel, and as he said the word 
" butter " he looked to be bursting with secret know- 
ledge. There were the Americans who could not return 
home because the great liners, the Lusitania, the Maure- 
tania, and the rest, had been disembowelled and sent to 



I04 THE WAR LORDS 

Archangel. An Oxford professor told you of the college 
don who had been summoned to the station to interpret 
for the Russians who were passing through, and your 
favourite aunt — a woman of unimpeachable veracity 
and common-sense — assured you she had seen the 
Cossacks watering their horses at Bedford Station. The 
Norwegian journalist in London could tell you of the 
Norwegian captain who had seen the Russians being 
disembarked at Aberdeen, and your neighbour on the 
magisterial bench had had a letter from an officer at 
Salisbury Plain in which he spoke of his work in connec- 
tion with the thousands of Russians who had been sent 
thither to recruit after their long sea-voyage. The early 
bus-driver coming down Kilburn High Road had seen 
the hosts of Russia marching to Paddington, and the 
" knocker-up " of the policeman had the assurance of 
that functionary that he had been summoned thus early 
to the station because the Russians were passing through. 
There was the man who showed you the letter from his 
son who had seen 40,000 Russians embark at a southern 
seaport. Could he disbelieve his son ? And could you 
disbelieve his son's father ? From Southampton you 
learned that no one doubted because everyone knew, 
and letters from Rochdale and Stafford, Gloucester and 
Crewe, and a multitude of other places spoke of the 
passage of the Russians as if the fact were no more 
disputable than the Decalogue, Every event hinged 
on Archangel. What was the Oceanic doing in the 
strange waters where it was wrecked ? What was the 
battle of Heligoland Bight except a diversion to cover 
the transport of the troops across the North Sea ? And 
meanwhile the railways were closed for days and trains 
thundered through hour by hour, day and night, with 
drawn blinds and heavy burdens. Who could these 
hosts be and from whence could they come ? 



THE ASQUITH CABINETS 105 

Private denials from Cabinet Ministers of course only 
made the thing more clear to the Behevers. What 
could they do but deny — even if they knew ? And was 
it not possible that from some of them the truth was 
hidden? For rumour has a faculty of making even 
opposition serve its purposes. And not all Ministers 
denied whole-heartedly, and there were members of 
their own family who doubted them even when they 
appeared whole-hearted. 

It seemed at last that the Behevers had carried the 
day and at this moment the whisper that deafened our 
ears first found its way into print, clothed in significant 
mystery. " There is also no doubt present in Lord 
Kitchener's calculations," said a London newspaper in 
its leader columns, " another formidable factor, which 
for mihtary reasons we forbear to mention, but which, 
when its existence is disclosed, may, we venture to think, 
stagger Europe." It was cautious and discreet, but at 
last Rumour had a printed word to rest on. And when, 
a few days later, a message from Rome, stating that it was 
" officially " announced that Russian troops had arrived 
in England for France, was passed for pubhcation by 
the Press Bureau and appeared in the evening news- 
papers, the Behevers faced the Unbelievers in a spirit 
of unmitigated triumph. 

But their pride was short-lived, and a week later the 
tide turned against them. A message from Belgium 
drew from the Press Bureau the following statement : 

" There is no truth whatever in the rumours that Russian soldiers 
have landed in, or passed through. Great Britain on their way to France 
or Belgium. 

" The statements that Russian troops are now on Belgian or French 
soil should be discredited." 

If the intention was to get rid of the fable by one deci- 
sive " whiff of grapeshot," the last sentence was badly 



io6 THE WAR LORDS 

phrased. To say that a thing " should be discredited " 
was to leave an option to the reader. It was not so 
short as " untrue " and certainly not nearly so final. 

It was not surprising therefore to find that the Pro- 
Russian party were still unmoved and that they pointed 
to the equivocal denial almost as a new confirmation of 
their faith. The desire to believe became less urgent 
as the German Army fell back from the Marne, and as 
the weeks went by without a sign the phantom faded 
into thin air and was forgotten. 

But the legend of the army that sailed from Arch- 
angel to England and passed through it (with drawn 
blinds) and vanished from our southern shores as 
mysteriously as it arrived on our northern coast wiU 
remain. It will provide for posterity a speculation as 
interesting as that as to the reasons for the failure of 
Grouchy to appear on the field of Waterloo. Was he 
also a mirage of the mind? The legend will take its 
place with that of the Flying Dutchman, and the phan- 
tom army will perhaps sail the seas for ever in the 
phantom ship. It has come as near being a fact as 
any fiction can. But the true interest of the legend is 
psychological rather than historical. It offers the most 
striking instance in our time of the growth of a myth, 
and it throws a curious light on the origin of the myths 
that have developed in the past out of the terrors, 
anxieties, and hopes of peoples fumbling darkly for an 
explanation of an inexplicable world. It could only 
have survived in circumstances in which the Press 
had become artificially silent and had ceased to bring 
Rumour to the challenge of definite proof. For the 
true twilight of the gods came with the printing press. 
Mythology and the newspaper cannot co-exist. 



THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH 

AND THE SPIRIT OF SERBIA 

I. THE BACK DOOR TO BERLIN 

It is not only to the battlefield that we have to look 
for the true signs of the progress of the war. The 
straws that show how the wind blows come from the 
streets and the Chancelleries as well as from the trenches. 
The riots in Budapest were as significant an event as 
the victory of the Falkland Islands, and the retirement 
of Count Berchtold from the Foreign Secretaryship at 
Vienna throws as illuminating a searchlight on the whole 
field of the war as the flounderings of Hindenburg in the 
mud of Poland. Both the riots and the retirement 
convey the same lesson. " Keep your eye on Hungary " 
is a sound axiom of the war. There is the breach in the 
German fortress. The shortest way to Berlin is the 
longest. It is not by the front door of the Rhine, but 
by the back door of the Danube, for that door is very 
vulnerable. It might open at a knock. It might open 
without a knock. y 

The reasons are worth considering. There was prob- 
ably never a war in which the issues were so various and 
so complicated — in which there were so many wheels 
within wheels. If young Peterkin went through Europe 
asking the question which old Kaspar found so difficult 
to answer — " What did they kill each other for ? " — he 
would be bewildered by the variety of the explanations 
offered. " To defend the neutrality of Belgium and the 

sanctity of treaties " the Englishman would say. " To 

107 



io8 THE WAR LORDS 

preserve our independence " would be the Belgian 
answer. " To deliver the Serbian race from the 
Austrian yoke " says the Serbian. " To resist aggres- 
sion and recover the lost provinces " the Frenchman 
would answer. " To defend our Fatherland from the 
Russian menace and extend the blessings of our Kultur " 
the German would say. " To save the Austrian Empire 
from dissolution " says the Austrian. " To protect our 
little brother, the Serbian Slav " says the Russian. 
" To recover Macedonia " says the Turk. " To avenge 
the wrong done to us twenty years ago " says the 
Japanese. And each answer would be one phase of the 
whole truth. But if young Peterkin carefully collated 
the answers he would, being an intelligent boy, inform 
his little sister Wilhelmine that, apart from the ambitions 
of Prussia, the root of all the killing was this: Was 
Russia or Germany, Slav or Teuton, to be master of 
Constantinople and the warden of the Balkans ? And 
as a secondary cause he would put the preservation of 
the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

That Empire has had more hard things said about 
it than any save that of the Turk, and it has deserved 
them more. Gladstone declared truly that no one could 
put his finger anywhere and say, " Here Austria did 
well," and Bismarck likened the Austrian Empire to 
a ramshackle house built with bad bricks and only 
held together by the German cement. It was said 
long ago that if Austria did not exist it would have to 
be invented. The truth is that it has the appearance 
of an "invention" — a thing that has been pieced 
together out of disparate material rather than of a 
thing that has grown out of the soil. It is the negation 
of nationality. It is as artificial as Mrs. Gamp's curls 
which were so obviously false that they could not be 
said to be a deception. Falstaff said that Squire Shallow 



THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH 109 

was like a man made out of cheeseparings after supper. 
Austria-Hungary is hardly more real than that. It is 
like a moth-eaten structure that has long been uninhabit- 
able but has forgotten to tumble down. It has been 
allowed to stand just as the Venetian Empire was 
allowed to stand until Napoleon came with his whiff 
of grapeshot and reality and crumbled it to dust. For 
a generation the prophets have prophesied disaster, 
and always the time of disaster was the same. When 
Francis Joseph dies, then . . . 

But Francis Joseph has refused to die. He is 

" The last leaf upon the tree 
In the Spring " 

and survives every storm that rages and every wind that 
blows. There has been no such reign in history as his, 
for the seventy-two years of Louis XIV. included some 
sixteen years of adolescence in which his sovereignty was 
nominal, while the sixty-seven years of Francis Joseph 
have been years of actual rule. And the reign has been 
no less remarkable for its events than for its duration. 
He came to the throne on the abdication of his uncle in 
1848 — in that year when the absolutism of Metternich 
had collapsed and the thrones of Europe seemed falling 
to ruin amid almost universal revolution. Within ten 
years he had lost Lombardy to the Italians, and seven 
years later he was rolled in the dust by Bismarck and 
found his country thrust out of the German confedera- 
tion and the headship of the German family transferred 
to the Prussian. 

But these external disasters are only a part of the 
catastrophic story. Within the empire his reign has 
been red with blood. The best that can be said for him 
in regard to the infamy of his dealing with the Hungarian 
revolution in 1 849 is that he was young — little more than 
a boy — and that he was probably only a tool in the 



no THE WAR LORDS 

hands of Windischgratz and the ferocious Haynau. But 
no courtly chronicling will ever wipe out the stain of 
the murder of Louis Batthyanyi and the Hungarian 
patriots. 

From that episode sprang those curses which, whether 
real or legendary, have had a terrible fulfilment. It is 
said that the Countess Karolyi, whose son was among 
the victims, uttered this mediaeval malediction upon the 
Emperor : 

" May Heaven and Hell blast his happiness ! May 
his family be exterminated! May he be smitten in the 
persons of those he loves ! May his life be wrecked, and 
may his children be brought to ruin ! " 

And there is another curse attributed to a distin- 
guished woman, who was dragged from her family and 
flogged by Haynau's savages in the market-place — a 
curse more precise and more daringly prophetic, for it 
declared that his crimes were to be avenged by thirteen 
tragedies, and that within two years of the last he was 
to die. And those who love the occult take pleasure in 
making a Hst of the calamities that have befallen the 
Emperor and in showing that the murder at Serajevo 
completed the tale, and that Francis Joseph's death is 
nearly due. Whatever credence is attached to the 
curses — and they are probably only inventions — there 
has rarely been a career in history more persistently 
dogged by tragedy than that of the Emperor — ^his niece 
burned to death, his daughter poisoned, his brother 
Maximilian shot in Mexico, his sister-in-law insane, his 
cousin Ludwig of Bavaria insane, a murderer and a 
suicide, his only son Rudolph a suicide and a murderer, 
his wife, after attempting suicide by drowning, assassin- 
ated at Geneva, his sister-in-law burned to death in 
Paris, his brother exiled following a notorious scandal, 
his nephew and heir assassinated. Add to all this the 






m- ■■■_ 








lUMuaaMNMafi 



Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria-Hungary 



THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH iii 

innumerable matrimonial scandals and squabbles, the 
morganatic marriages, the elopements, the family con- 
flicts, and we have a record of personal misery that would 
be difhcult to match in any degree of life. And at the 
end of all, this stupendous calamity in the m.^.dst of 
which the reign that rose in the red dawn of revolution 
is setting in a sea of blood. 

It would be unjust to Francis Joseph to take the 
punishment as the measure of his offence. On the 
contrary, though he has had notorious private failings, 
he has had considerable public virtues, and it is probable 
that nothing but his personality has saved his Empire 
from the disruption that is inherent in its artificial 
character. Think for a moment of the problem of 
government. Here, to begin with, is that impossible 
anomaly, a Dual Monarchy. And in that dual kingdom 
there is a confusion of races without parallel — Slavs 
(Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenes, Croats, Serbs, 
Slovenes) to the number of 21,000,000; Germans, 
12,000,000; Magyars (Hungarians), 9,000,000; Latins 
(Italians and Rumanians), 4,000,000. With the con- 
fusion of races is the confusion of tongues. There are, 
exclusive of dialects, ten principal languages spoken in 
the Empire. 

If Francis Joseph has failed to weld this hetero- 
geneous mass into a political whole, the fact need cause 
no surprise — certainly no surprise to Englishmen who 
have had centuries of experience of the attempt to 
govern Ireland on centralised lines. His own tendency 
has, on the whole, been distinctly liberal. After that 
ruthless repression of the Hungarians, for which he can 
only be held technically responsible, he moved towards 
an enlightened toleration of the national ideal which 
was new in an empire predominantly Catholic and there- 
fore non-national. The attitude of Austria, especially 



112 THE WAR LORDS 

in recent years, has certainly not been unfavourable to 
freedom. 

But this movement towards cohesion on autonomous 
and national lines has been vitiated by the second of 
the great elements in the Dual Monarchy — Hungary. 
Although the Slavs are the most numerous element in 
the Dual State, the two most compact racial bodies are 
the Germans and the Hungarians, using that word in its 
racial sense as applying only to the Magyars. Now the 
Magyars are among the most able people in Europe. 
" There is more political genius in the little finger of a 
Magyar than in the whole body of a German," said a 
distinguished diplomatist to me long ago, and in saying 
this he expressed what is a commonplace of political 
society. It was the Magyars who first raised the flag 
of revolt against the old tyranny of Austria. They not 
only won their freedom and the independence of Hun- 
gary, but they won a lasting name as the champions of 
constitutional Hberty in Europe. 

Unfortunately, as not infrequently happens, their 
love of liberty was found in practice to be restricted to 
themselves. Liberty was too precious a thing to be 
wasted on Slavs, Latins, and non-Magyars generally, 
and the result has been the complete political suppres- 
sion of the subject races and a condition of unrest that 
is largely the cause of the disruptive condition of the 
Dual Monarchy. And the influence of the Magyars 
has not been limited to Hungary. The political genius 
of the Magyar nobility has made them the dominating 
partner in the Federal government and even in Austrian 
affairs. 

From all this it follows that the Magyars, with their 
high racial pretensions and feudal scorn of inferior 
peoples, are not likely to tolerate the idea of being hewers 
of wood and drawers of water for Berlin. The Magyars 



THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH 113 

neither love the Germans emotionally nor respect them 
intellectually. So far as this is a war for keeping the 
non-Magyar elements under control, it is a war of which 
they approve and which their policy has promoted. But 
so far as this is a war for the aggrandisement of Germany 
it is a war in which the Magyars have no enthusiasm, and 
the disposition of Berlin to regard Austria-Hungary 
merely as its obedient underHng in the conduct of the 
war very early led to serious friction. There is nothing 
more certain than that Hungary will not sacrifice itself 
to save Prussia or even Austria, and that should it see 
its interests imperilled by association with Germany it 
would not hesitate to take an independent line. 

And there is a particular as well as a general reason 
for its concern at the tendencies of the war. The 
possibihty of the intervention of Rumania has been 
present throughout the struggle. At the beginning 
the German sympathies of King Carol were a restraining 
influence, and he made a strong pro-German deHver- 
ance in which he laid emphasis on the fact that the true 
interest of his country lay in the recovery of Bessarabia 
which was annexed by Russia under the Berlin Treaty. 
Since his death, however, the popular sympathies of the 
people with the Allies have been manifest, and the advent 
of Italy into the struggle has revived the movement in 
favour of war in Rumania, whose relations with Italy 
are racially and politically intimate. The movement 
is dictated by one main motive — the future of Tran- 
sylvania. That portion of Hungary is overwhelmingly 
Rumanian in population, and it has long been fermenting 
with unrest under the repressive rule of the Magyars. 
To paint Rumania as a chivalrous deHverer would be 
an imaginative flight which it would be well to avoid. 
A country which has a higher proportion of illiterates 
than Russia cannot be suspected of any love of demo- 



114 THE WAR LORDS 

cracy. But there can be no doubt that the advent of 
a Rumanian army into Rumanian Hungary would raise 
the population en masse, and it was this shadow in the 
south that darkened the thought of the Magyars. They 
saw the dismemberment of their kingdom approaching. 
They saw themselves being sacrificed to keep Prussian 
territory free from the invader. Their pride and their 
interest alike were challenged, and they are not the 
people to sit idle under any challenge. They are the 
intellectual masters of the Empire and hold the old 
Emperor in the hollow of their hands, and it was doubt- 
less to placate them as much as anything that Germany 
concentrated all its resources to fling back the Russians 
from the Carpathians into the heart of their own country. 
Berlin knows that it must look to its back door. 



II. THE ROOT OF THE WAR 

War is a great schoolmaster. It was said by John 
Bright that its only virtue was that it taught people 
geography. The partial truth of that saying is realised 
to-day in an unexampled manner. We all know the 
map of Europe as few of us ever knew it before. We 
could find our way almost blindfold over the Vosges 
Mountains and through the Ardennes to Nieuport. 
We are more familiar with the marshlands of East 
Prussia and the configuration of the GaUipoli Peninsula 
than we are with the Chiltern Hills, and we know the 
passes and summits of the Carpathians better than we 
know the mountains of Lakeland. 

But geography is not the only subject on which we 
have had a miraculous illumination. We have learned 
much about the financial basis of society, the economic 
relations of peoples, the meaning of credit, the strategy 
of war, the functions of the State, and a hundred other 



THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH 115 

phases of our strange human society. We are in a 
school where we learn with a terrible rapidity many 
things to which we have been indifferent in the past. 
We were indifferent because, in our happy security, we 
thought they had no bearing upon our lives. We find 
that we were wrong — that the roots of our individual 
life have vast ramifications, that a blow struck in some 
remote corner of the globe may bring all our happiness 
to ruin. As I write in a tiny hamlet of a Midland county, 
I look across to a little cottage and see a woman bending 
at work in the garden. Last July she had three sons. 
To-day two of them lie in unknown graves in Flanders. 
The third is wounded and in hospital. I dare say she 
did not so much as hear of the Serajevo tragedy. Yet 
that tragedy lighted a train of events that has wrecked 
her life as it has wrecked the lives of millions all over the 
face of Europe. And if there is one lesson of the war 
more imperative than others, it is the lesson that the 
democracy can no longer live in the old careless ignorance 
of the events on which its existence ultimately depends. 
How indifferent we were on that day when we heard 
the news of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand 
and his wife! To most of us it was only the latest 
episode in the tragic story of the Habsburgs and a new 
sorrow for the sorrow-laden Francis Joseph. If we 
thought of its political meaning at all, we saw in it 
merely an incident in that interminable quarrel be- 
tween Austria-Hungary and Serbia, a quarrel which had 
usually taken the serio-comic form of the " Pig War," 
Austria shutting out the Serbian pigs and leaving its 
neighbour without a market for its principal article of 
trade. Our sympathies were not engaged on either side. 
Austria made no appeal to any sentiment, and the 
reputation of Serbia had been too much stained with 
poUtical assassination to command respect. 



ii6 THE WAR LORDS 

And yet there was no people in Europe more entitled 
to the sympathy and respect of the world than this 
nation of peasants who had fought so heroically for 
their national existence. Nor is there any people, not 
even the Poles, who furnish so convincing a witness 
that the principle of nationality can never be out- 
raged without the penalty being exacted in full. If it 
were possible to destroy a nation, the Armenians would 
have long since perished under the centuries of torture 
that they have suffered, and the Serbs would have been 
absorbed long ago in the culture of their tyrants. It 
is more than five centuries since the Serbian people fell 
before the Turk on the field of Kossovo. They had 
touched greatness under their Tsar, Stephen Dushan, 
had been supreme in the Balkan Peninsula, and had 
developed laws and commerce and even the arts. But 
the triumph of the Turk left them shattered in fragments. 
Only that portion which after the field of Kossovo took 
refuge in the httle mountain land of Montenegro pre- 
served its freedom. Bosnia, in self-defence, adopted the 
faith of Islam. The fragment known as Serbia was 
ground under the heel of a ruthless tyranny, its nobihty 
obHterated, its people enslaved. More than four centuries 
passed. The Montenegrins, entrenchedintheirmountains, 
still kept the flag of freedom flying, their life a perpetual 
waragainst the enveloping Turk. Butthe dawn was break- 
ing. The strength had gone out of the Turkish Samson, 
and first among the Balkan peoples to throw off his yoke 
were the Serbians. They won their freedom in 1804 
by their own unaided courage. The war of liberation 
in Greece a few years later touched the imagination of 
the world and brought to the cause of emancipation the 
enthusiasm of the West and the passion of the poets. 
And when, half a century later, the Bulgarians drove the 
enemy out of their land it was with the powerful aid of 



THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH 117 

Russia and the passionate support of the British demo- 
cracy. But Serbia fought its battle without any applause, 
and sounded alone the doom of the Turk in Europe. 

But when the menace of the Turk was rolled south- 
wards new clouds began to gather on the Serbian 
horizon. They came from the north and took definite 
shape in 1875. In that year there was a rising amongst 
the Serbians of Bosnia against the rule of the Sick Man. 
He had now few possessions left in the Balkans. He had 
been thrust out of Serbia, Greece, and Rumania. He 
was going from Bulgaria, and the impulse of Hberty had 
at last roused the Bosnians to action. Their kindred 
in Serbia and Montenegro answered cheerfully the 
familiar call to war against the historic foe, and their 
victory seemed assured and the freedom of Bosnia 
accomplished. But at this moment Austria-Hungary 
intervened and at the subsequent Berlin Congress 
robbed Serbia of the fruits of her sacrifice. Bosnia 
was left nominally under the Turk — actually in the 
possession of Austria. It was one of the many evil seeds 
sown at the BerHn Congress, and it is a humihation for 
this country to remember that it was sown with the 
sanction and support of DisraeH. It was he more than 
any one else who was responsible for the two main blots 
on the Berhn Treaty — the handing back of Macedonia 
to the Turk and the maintenance of the Turk in Bosnia 
with the reversion to Austria. Bismarck, watching 
DisraeH's hand, secretly rejoiced. "The Jew will do 
the job for us," he had said to Austria, and now it was 
being done. Those of us who recall the theatrical 
" peace with honour " speech can to-day measure the 
calamity which that vain boast foreshadowed. The 
BerHn Treaty was DisraeH's single great achievement, 
and no greater wrong was ever done to the cause of 
peace and no greater outrage to honour. 



ii8 THE WAR LORDS 

From that wrong — ^with its denial of the claims of 
nationality, its repudiations of the small nations, its 
concessions to Austria, and its rehabilitation of the Turk 
— came our woes. Serbia, denied that reunion with her 
Bosnian kindred which her heroism had won, was left 
to struggle against the new foe, whose way to Salonica 
she barred and whose jealousy of her growth was 
exhibited in every form of irritation and intrigue. It 
was Austria who was always the evil genius of the 
peasant people. It was she who led the corrupt King 
Milan to engage in the first war with Bulgaria in 1885, 
and it was her malign influence which was largely 
responsible for the second Balkan war in 19 12. She 
had shut out the Serbians from access to the sea through 
Albania, and the Serbians turned for their reward to 
Macedonia and so came in conflict with Bulgaria, which 
was precisely the object which Austria aimed at. In 
the meantime, in 1909, Austria had frankly annexed 
Bosnia. It was a flagrant breach of the Berlin Treaty 
and a calculated challenge to Russia to contest Aus- 
trian supremacy in the Balkans. Isvolsky accepted the 
challenge and encouraged Serbia and Montenegro to 
resist this final separation from their fellow Serbs. But 
at the critical moment the full meaning of the conspiracy 
was made apparent. The Kaiser's " shining armour " 
glittered in the field, and Russia, declining the new 
challenge, left Serbia and Montenegro to make their 
apologies and retire defeated. It was a great victory for 
Austria and a greater for Germany. Russia had been 
driven out of the field and the Serbian dreams seemed 
finally destroyed. 

But this was only the beginning. It disclosed the 
larger aims which were now to be rapidly accomplished. 
Through Austria, Germany would advance over the 
body of Serbia to the JEg&an and so establish her 



THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH 119 

" through connection " with Asia Minor and those 
Oriental glories that have been the dream of the Kaiser 
as they were the dream of Napoleon. The Turk was 
already " squared," and with Russia quiescent the path 
was clear and only the suitable occasion for taking it 
was awaited. But in 191 2 there came a grave check to 
the plot. The Balkan Federation was born and Bulgar, 
Greek, and Serbian joined forces to drive the Turk from 
the Balkans. Their triumph was swift and startling; 
but not more swift and startling than the collapse. In 
that tragedy there were many villains; but the victor 
was Austria and, through Austria, Germany. The 
powerful Federation that had suddenly sprung up to 
bar the way of Germany to the JEgean was dissolved, 
and in its place there were only a group of angry and 
broken little states, ready at a word to fly again at each 
other's throats. The path was miraculously cleared 
once more, and the moment to strike approached. We 
know from the revelations of Signor Giohtti that the 
ultimatum to Serbia was contemplated in 191 3, but for 
some reason it was delayed. Perhaps a plausible excuse 
was awaited. 

It came with the Serajevo tragedy. The truth about 
that mysterious episode will one day be unravelled. It 
has been suggested that the assassins were tools of the 
Hungarian enemies of the Archduke, and the suggestion 
cannot be wholly dismissed, for the facts leave much 
to be explained. That the Archduke was extremely 
unpopular with the reactionaries of the Dual Monarchy 
was notorious. He was married to a Slav, was known to 
have Slav sympathies and to contemplate, when he came 
to the throne, a large extension of liberty to the Slav 
peoples who were so ruthlessly repressed by the Magyar 
autocracy. The circumstances of his visit to Serajevo 
were singularly suspicious, and the lack of proper pro- 



I20 THE WAR LORDS 

tection was much remarked on. Nor can we leave out 
of account the small respect which was shown at his 
funeral and the refusal of the Emperor to allow his dead 
wife to share her husband's grave. 

But whatever may be the finding of history on this 
obscure subject, certain facts are clear. With the death 
of the Archduke two things were accomplished which 
served the purpose of the conspirators at Vienna and 
Budapest in an almost miraculous fashion. The most 
formidable enemy of the reactionaries, the man whose 
Slav sympathies they most feared, was out of the 
way, and, equally important, an excuse of the most 
respectable kind had presented itself for finally clearing 
Serbia from Austria's path to the South. If the ultima- 
tum of 1 91 3 was delayed because of the lack of an ade- 
quate peg on which to hang it, there was no longer any 
reason for hesitation. 

The secrecy with which the bolt was forged is familiar 
history. For more than three weeks there was no appar- 
ent movement. The ambassadors at Vienna were, 
except no doubt for the sense of mystery and disquiet 
which the atmosphere of conspiracy communicates, as 
ignorant of what was happening as the English people 
in the midst of their domestic quarrel. It was not until 
July 21 that Sir Edward Grey sent that simple inquiry 
which opens the White Paper. The contrast of that 
quiet, almost casual, httle note with the swift and tre- 
mendous drama that unrolls itself in the following pages 
is unhke anything else to be found in books. It is as 
though with a careless remark about the weather we 
stumble upon the Day of Judgment. It was not until 
the ultimatum to Serbia appeared that the world gener- 
ally reaHsed that anything serious was afoot. Its terms 
left no room for escape, except by way of abject 
surrender, and the time -limit of forty -eight hours 



THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH 121 

deliberately excluded any possibility of peaceful negotia- 
tion. It was the " Hands up " of the highwayman. 

No doubt it was hoped that the coup of 1909 would 
be repeated and that Russia would leave Serbia to its 
fate. There was ground for this view in the fact that 
M. Sazonoff, the Russian Foreign Minister, unlike M. 
Isvolsky, who held the office in 1909, was anxious for 
peace and had negotiated the Potsdam agreement that 
followed the Bosnian episode. But the situation was 
now fundamentally different. Then it was only the 
ambitions of Serbia which were at stake : now it was its 
existence, and not only that but the whole future of the 
Balkans. There is evidence that at the last moment, 
when they realised that the challenge would be taken 
up. Count Berchtold, Count Tizsa, and their fellow- 
conspirators were anxious to draw back. But if Vienna 
had been " bluffing," Berlin had not, and it was Berlin 
who was master. Its terms were a complete diplomatic 
victory as in 1909 or war, and the Hungarian plotters 
were caught in the net of their own fashioning. They 
had exploited the " shining armour " to win a bloodless 
victory and found themselves the tools of Germany's 
larger ambitions. And so in the end the wrongs of 
Serbia set Europe in flames, and the " peace with 
honour " of the Berlin Congress issued in universal war. 
It is the nemesis of nationalism. 



THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS 

AND THE TRAGEDY OF POLAND 

I 

It seems a long time since the newspapers talked so 
confidently about the " steam roller," and since Mr. 
Belloc used to correct their optimism by expressing 
doubts as to whether the invasion of Silesia would be 
really effectively begun before the end of October of last 
year. In the interval we have all grown wiser. We 
have learned much about the magnitude of the task, the 
meaning of strategic railways and of the military power 
of Germany. Silesia is still far off, and we are watching 
with tense feelings the progress of that colossal move- 
ment for the envelopment of the Russian armies upon 
which the enemy seem to have staked all the resources 
at their command. Four times, from autumn to early 
spring, the tidal wave thundered over Poland, from the 
extreme south to the extreme north, and seemed about 
to submerge the Polish capital, and four times it was 
dammed within sound, almost within sight of the city. 
We see now that the capture of Warsaw was the supreme 
winter task of Germany. After the failure at Ypres she 
concentrated all her power for a decisive blow in the East 
that would paralyse Russia and leave her own armies 
free to meet the mighty storm which she knew was 
gathering in the West and would break when the moment 
was ripe. The decisive blow failed. Russia, we see 
now, was not a steam roller; but a dam. The dam held 
throughout the winter and spring, and though the blows 

122 



THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS 123 

are falling now with redoubled energy the decision for 
which Germany seeks is still denied. 

If the expectations entertained at the beginning of the 
war in regard to Russia were extravagant, her military 
prestige is still high and her potentialities enormous. 
It is possible that the ultimate military judgment will 
declare that her plan of campaign was misconceived. 
There were two opposed views as to what her true 
function in the war should be. The view attributed 
to General Ruzsky was that of a miHtary refusal from 
the beginning, the surrender of the Polish salient and a 
retreat into the heart of Russia, drawing the enemy in 
pursuit according to the model of 181 2. The other view, 
of which the Grand Duke Nicholas was the advocate, 
favoured the retention of the Pohsh saHent and an 
aggressive movement from the base of the Vistula. It 
was the latter view that prevailed, and throughout the 
early stages of the war it seemed to be overwhelmingly 
justified and to promise decisive results. Nor must we 
forget that, viewing the whole war as a single operation, 
the aggressive policy of Russia had a profound effect 
in disarranging the German plan of campaign. It was 
the advance into East Prussia in the first weeks of the 
war that weakened the force of the blow in the West, 
and in a large measure deprived the enemy of the 
initiative. And it was the threat to Silesia and the 
Hungarian plains in the south that later on drew off 
the main energies of the enemy from the West and left 
France and England the breathing space in which to 
gather up their resources for an overwhelming offensive. 
Whatever the ultimate judgment may be as to the 
wisdom of the policy of Russia, there will be no denial 
of the magnitude of her service and the very large 
measure of positive military success which she achieved. 
That success may be attributed to the lessons of the 



124 THE WAR LORDS 

disaster that befell her in Manchuria ten years ago, and 
largely to the personal influence o£ the Grand Duke 
Nicholas. There has probably never been a more 
infamous story of corruption than that associated with 
the Russo-Japanese War. It permeated the whole army 
and navy from the grand dukes downwards, and in the 
course of one of the many trials that followed the war, 
the head of the firm of Tille, the army contractors, 
admitted that in the course of twenty-five years they 
had paid ^2,000,000 in bribes. 

The revelations achieved something, but they did 
not cleanse the stables. They still left the army and 
navy the prey of the exploiter, and the Government 
incurably inefficient and unteachable. Only a few 
weeks before the war, when the miHtary budget was 
introduced into the Duma, it was stated that there were 
2000 generals in the Russian Army, against 350 in the 
French Army, and that of these the vast majority had 
received their rank not for military merit but through 
patronage or personal service. Of the younger generals 
only 25 per cent, had passed through the regimental 
mill. And out of 300 colonels of most recent promotion, 
only one had gone through a miHtary academy. The 
official attitude towards corruption may be illustrated 
by the case of General Reinbot, who before the Russo- 
Japanese War was the Prefect of Moscow, practically 
the Viceroy of the Tsar. He was convicted of corrup- 
tion in connection with the army and sentenced to a 
long term of imprisonment. This was reduced to a year 
in a fortress, followed soon afterwards by a free pardon. 
When the invasion of East Prussia took place, General 
Reinbot was appointed governor. 

It was not without reason, therefore, that the Grand 
Duke, addressing his commissariat staff at the begin- 
ning of the war, is reported to have concluded his instruc- 



THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS 125 

tions in these terms : " Gentlemen, no stealing." And 
probably if anybody could induce an army contractor 
to be honest, it would be the Grand Duke Nicholas. 
For he is not only the most influential man about the 
Court, but he is the most popular figure in Russia. His 
mere height and the dignity of his carriage would alone 
command respect, and his manner is at once modest 
and authoritative. His temperament is that of the 
mystic, and he is reputed to be the source of the strange 
influence which the Phillippes, Meshkertskys, and Ras- 
putins have exercised over the mind of the Tsar and 
the politics of Russia. 

But if he is obscurantist in temperament, he is a very 
practical man in affairs. He has taken his career as 
a soldier seriously ever since as a youth of twenty-one 
he fought in the Russo-Turkish War, and if he is not a 
great strategist himself he has the wisdom to rely upon 
the men who are wise. Nothing is more significant in 
the generalship of the Russian army to-day than the 
entire disappearance of the figures who were prominent 
in the Russo-Japanese War. We have to thank the 
Boer War for at least one thing. It showed us our 
general of capacity. It gave us Sir John French. If 
the Russo-Japanese War did not teach Russia on whom 
to rely, it at least taught her whom to avoid. The only 
man who played a conspicuous part in that campaign, 
and who reappeared in high command in the present 
war, was General Rennenkampf. He came from Man- 
churia with almost the only reputation that survived 
that disaster. Like Sir John French's, it was the 
reputation of a brilliant cavalry leader. But unlike 
Sir John French's it has not survived the severer test. 
His failure to arrive when Mackensen's army was nearly 
enveloped near Lodz was as fatal as Grouchy's non-arrival 
on the field of Waterloo, and it led to his supersession. 



126 THE WAR LORDS 

The service that the Grand Duke Nicholas has done 
to Russia to-day is that he has cleared the path for the 
men of brains, and has not disdained to go to Germany 
for his lessons. General Yanushkevitch, the Chief of 
the General Staff, is the Moltke of the campaign, and 
he received his military education in Germany, where 
the press is never weary of reproaching him with 
" ingratitude." Very German, too, in his learned and 
professional equipment is General Ruzsky, the strategist, 
who, with General Ivanoff, the Chief of the Organising 
Staff, completes the intellectual trinity of the Russian 
Army. 

The action of the Tsar in abolishing the sale of vodka 
has also been attributed to the influence of the Grand 
Duke. In a sense this no doubt is true. No incident 
of the war has produced a more profound impression 
on the mind of the world; but the revolution has come 
about as a military necessity rather than as a social 
reform. From the latter point of view it had been 
demanded for years. The Zemstvos and village com- 
munities had implored the Government to save the 
nation from the ravages of drink. The very victims 
themselves joined in the appeal, and Count Witte at 
last took a step towards the revolution when he made 
the distribution of vodka a Government monopoly, 
destroying the whole vested interest of the trade at a 
blow. But the next step seemed impossible. From 
the monopoly the Government drew a revenue of nearly 
a hundred millions sterling a year. The solvency of the 
State seemed to rest on an industry which was destroy- 
ing the very soul of the nation. It was a hard alterna- 
tive that confronted the Government, but the war made 
the course clear. The Grand Duke remembered the 
mobilisation during the Balkan crisis. It had always 
been said that when war came the ravages of vodka 



THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS 127 

would be worth a week's start to Germany. During the 
mobilisation in 1912 the saying was found to be well 
within the truth. Russia collapsed into intoxication. 
The men came, as it were, out of a debauch, reeHng, 
stupefied, their pockets bulging with vodka bottles. At 
the depots, as the men staggered in with their bulging 
pockets, the vodka bottles were taken from them, and 
there arose " a mountain of broken glass in a sea of 
whiskey." 

That experience was not to be repeated in 19 14. Like 
a bolt from the blue came the decree that deHvered the 
nation from the tyranny of drink. What years of agitation 
had failed to accomplish, the war effected in a day. 
Revenue or no revenue, the nation must be saved. 
Vodka must go. The Grand Duke spoke, and the 
miracle was done. It has led to another miracle; the 
industrial productivity of the people has increased from 
30 to 50 per cent. The war apart, Russia has found that 
its sacrifices have enriched it beyond all calculation. 

But when the strain and excitement of the war is 
over, something else will be necessary. If you do not 
have vodka you must have Hberty, education, hope, 
ambition. For vodka is not so much a cause as a 
consequence, and it was a wise man who said that drink 
was the shortest cut out of Ancoats. Vodka has been 
abohshed as a miHtary necessity; but its place will have 
to be taken by the new and more wholesome interests 
that are denied to a people 75 per cent, of whom are 
illiterate. 

And it is in this connection that one's confidence in 
the Grand Duke Nicholas is modified. There will be no 
mihtary weakening from him. He stands aloof from the 
dangerous German influences that surround the Court 
of Petrograd, but he stands aloof also from the popular 
impulse of the nation. Russia cannot win through this 



128 THE WAR LORDS 

mighty conflict without all her energies being engaged, 
and those energies cannot be engaged while a corrupt 
oligarchy, largely under German influence, is at war with 
every instinct of liberty and popular expression within 
the nation. To have a victorious Russia there must be 
a free Russia, a Russia whose governance expresses the 
spirit of the nation and not the interests of a caste, and 
it is because, with all his fine qualities, he stands for a 
reactionary Russia that the Grand Duke leaves one's 
mind filled with doubts as to his adequacy for the task. 
It is true that it was he who issued the famous promise 
of hberty to Poland; but that promise, like the vodka 
decree, was a military necessity and events have not 
strengthened the hopes which it awakened. The state- 
ments of Prince Dolgourokoff made in the most influen- 
tial paper in Moscow as to the treatment of the Jews 
indicate no change in the heart of governing Russia, 
and the new scheme that has been announced for the 
suppression of the last rags of freedom left to Finland 
consorts ill with the idea of a war that is being waged 
for the protection of small nationalities. Nor is the 
experience of Galicia promising. We have commented 
justly on the attitude of the Pope towards Cardinal 
Mercier's great indictment of Germany; but it is fair 
to the Pope to remember that the Cardinal Archbishop 
of Lemberg has been deported to Russia, and that 
Bishop Jurek, the head of the Theological College of 
the Uniate Church, has been sent to Tomsk, in Siberia. 
For tactless imbecility indeed it would be hard to match 
the story of the invasion of Galicia. The people might 
easily have been won over by a reasonable pohcy of 
conciliation, but they were put instantly under the 
heel of the most stupid and ignorant influences. The 
monkish mystics of the Orthodox Church descended like 
vultures on their prey. Religious liberty was denied, 



THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS 129 

the national feeling insulted, the schools invaded, and 
a machine of tyrannical incompetence set to work to 
reduce hberty to a shadow. In a few swift weeks the 
" hberation " of Gahcia left the people yearning for the 
milder yoke of Austria. And this was only typical of 
the disastrous policy that governed Russia in the early 
months of the war. Bourtseff, who exposed the agent 
provocateur Azeff, and who returned to Russia under the 
general, if vague, promise that a new day had dawned, 
was in prison ; and as an example of the attitude towards 
liberty, I may mention that every publication printed 
in the Ukranian tongue in Russia was suppressed on 
the ground that the Government, on the authority of 
the official philologists of Russia, did not recognise the 
existence of such a language. I fancy Wales would not 
rush very enthusiastically to the recruiting office if the 
Government issued a ukase announcing that its native 
language was not recognised, and the War Office promptly 
suppressed every paper printed in its characters. 

For these deplorable follies, it is impossible to hold 
the Grand Duke wholly innocent. His power in the 
early stages of the war was almost illimitable and his 
failure to exercise it with wisdom and tolerance, at all 
events in Galicia, is a matter of history. In his sym- 
pathies he is Pan-Slavist, a fact in some measure due 
to his marriage with a daughter of King Nicholas of 
Montenegro, another of whose daughters is married to 
the Grand Duke's brother Peter. To that extent, it 
may be said that, unlike M. Sazonoff, he was one of 
those who regarded a conflict with Pan-Germanism 
as inevitable. It was a great blow to the Pan-Slavist 
cause when M. Isvolsky was superseded by M. Sazonoff, 
whose disposition was notoriously for peace, and whose 
advent to office in 1909 was followed by the Potsdam 
agreement and the withdrawal of two army corps from 



130 THE WAR LORDS 

the German frontier. But the web woven in the Balkans 
largely by M. Hartwig, the Russian Minister at Belgrade, 
changed the current despite him. Indeed, it will be 
found when all the skein of intrigue that preceded the 
war is unravelled how much the catastrophe was due 
to obscure diplomatists, like the Pan-Slav Hartwig, 
and the equally mischievous Pan-German von Tschir- 
schky, who as Ambassador at Vienna played so large 
and sinister a part in the final diplomatic stages of 
the tragedy. But the Pan-Slavism of the Grand Duke 
is no more an instinct of nationalism than the Pan- 
Germanism of the Kaiser. It is the expression not of 
Liberalism but of Imperialism. 



II 

1815-1915 

It is by the fulfilment of the pledge to Poland that 
history will judge the Grand Duke and the Tsar in whose 
name he spoke. The proclamation he issued on August 
14 is one of the most memorable documents on record, 
not merely for the magnitude of its theme, but for the 
splendour of its rhetoric. 

"Poles! 

" The hour has struck in which the sacred dream of 
your fathers and forefathers may find fulfilment, 

" A century and a half ago, the living flesh of Poland 
was torn asunder, but her soul did not die. She hved 
in hope that there would come an hour for the resurrec- 
tion of the Polish nation and for sisterly reconciliation 
with Russia. 

" The Russian Army now brings you the joyful tidings 



THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS 131 

of this reconciliation. May the boundaries be annulled 
which cut the Polish nation to pieces ! May that nation 
re-unite into one body under the sceptre of the Russian 
Emperor. Under this sceptre Poland shall be re-born, 
free in faith, in language, in self-government. 

" One thing only Russia expects of you : equal 
consideration for the rights of those nationalities to 
which history has linked you. 

" With open heart, with hand fraternally outstretched, 
Russia steps forward to meet you. She believes that 
the Sword has not rusted which, at Griinwald, struck 
down the enemy. From the shores of the Pacific to the 
North Seas, the Russian armies are on the march. The 
dawn of a new life is breaking for you. 

" May there shine, resplendent above that dawn, the 
sign of the Cross, symbol of the Passion and Resurrection 
of Nations ! 

" (Signed) Commander-in-Chief General Adjutant, 

" Nicholas." 

" I (14) August 1914." 

There is no more striking episode of the war than this 
swift and triumphant emergence of the PoHsh question 
from the general ruin. It had been truly said that you 
may destroy a State, but that you cannot destroy a 
nation. Like the camomile, to use Falstaff's image, the 
more it is trodden on the better it grows. It may die 
of decay, but it only thrives on oppression. Of this 
truth the supreme witness is the story of the Polish 
nation which is the most sustained tragedy in the 
history of modern Europe. Long before Russia or 
Prussia or Austria had found themselves, Poland was 
the great power of Eastern Europe, extending at one 
period from the shores of the Baltic to the shores of the 
Black Sea. Its disintegration was due mainly to its 



132 THE WAR LORDS 

failure as the centuries went on to meet the new condi- 
tions that enveloped it. On every side the great auto- 
cracies — the HohenzoUerns in Prussia, the Romanoffs 
in Russia, the Habsburgs in Austria — were consolidat- 
ing and centralising their powers, while Poland was the 
prey of aristocratic privileges. The ideal of the State 
was sacrificed to class liberties, and the fact that the 
Kingship was elective contributed to the spirit of dis- 
unity. There was no focus for the nation. Encom- 
passed on all sides by aggressive powers centralised in 
personal and hereditary monarchies, the doom of Poland 
was long foreseen. Frederick the Great was the chief 
architect of the first partition; Catherine II. of Russia 
was the author of the second. Maria Theresa shared in 
the plunder, but unwillingly, for she had a soul and, 
moreover, she had no wish to see Russia advancing 
to her own borders. There came a ray of hope when 
Napoleon was master of Europe and its dynasties, and 
the Poles flocked to his standard; but the hope was 
swallowed up in the ambitions of the great adventurer. 
With his eclipse there was one more fleeting promise of 
resurrection, and it is of good omen that it came from 
Russia, from that Alexander I. whose character and rule 
are one of the few bright spots in the tragic story of the 
Romanoffs. Why did that promise fail ? If we under- 
stand that we shall have a sure guide to the task of the 
future. 

At this time a hundred years ago there was sitting 
at Vienna a Congress of the great kings and their 
representatives. Europe, after nearly twenty years of 
war and disruption, was at peace. Napoleon had fallen, 
and his dream of a world empire had shrunk to the 
dimensions of the tiny island of Elba. And now, the 
Ogre, as they believed, securely caged, the kings and 
the diplomatists were assembled to rebuild the structure 



THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS 133 

of Europe and, if possible, to ingerminate perpetual 
peace. Yes, even at the risk of inflaming the martial 
soul of The Spectator^ it must be said that it is indubitably 
true that this monstrous idea prevailed. It was even 
put forward by Lord Castlereagh, who represented 
England at the Congress — so low, Mr. Strachey, had the 
warlike spirit of this great country fallen. 

Now we all know that the Congress of Vienna did not 
usher in the reign of perpetual peace. I do not here 
refer to the interlude of the Hundred Days that ended 
with Waterloo. That was only an aftermath of Napo- 
leonism, and did not affect the decrees of Vienna. There 
was, it is true, a long period of calm after Waterloo, but 
it was the. calm of exhaustion — not the calm of a just 
settlement. The true offspring of the Congress of Vienna 
was not the peace that prevailed for thirty years, but 
the wars that, beginning with the great upheaval of 
1848, have culminated in the universal catastrophe of 
to-day. 

Why did the Congress of Vienna , which did really 
desire to establish the new Europe on a foundation of 
enduring peace, sow instead the seeds of new harvests 
of death ? The question is a vital one at this time. At 
no distant period — the harvest of Krupp and Armstrong 
and Schneider having been reaped — there will be another 
Congress, not at Vienna, but at Stockholm, or The 
Hague, or some other neutral spot. And once again 
we shall see the architects surveying the ruins, designing 
the new structure and aiming, quite honestly, to make 
its proportions so just, its means so perfectly suited to 
its ends that it will never collapse again, but stand 
" four square to all the winds that blow." We shall 
not doubt their good intentions. But good intentions 
are not enough. The good intentions of Vienna paved 
our Hell. Much more important than the good inten- 



134 THE WAR LORDS 

tions of the architects will be the ideas from which they 
work, the interests they represent, the sort of cement 
they use to hold the new fabric together. 

And it is here that the lesson of Vienna is fruitful. 
" When I want to know what to do in given circum- 
stances," said a wit to me once, " I try to think what 
my father would have done — and then I do the opposite." 
The Congress of 1916 (if, happily, it be 191 6) will do well 
to observe a similar attitude of distrust in regard to 
the example of its true author and begetter, the Con- 
gress of 1 8 15. For if Europe repeats now what it did 
a century ago, then the fruit of its labours will not be 
lasting peace but more wars. And that for a very simple 
reason. The only interest that was not represented at 
the Congress of Vienna was the interest of the peoples 
concerned. The soil of Europe from Torres Vedras to 
Moscow was drenched with the blood and strewn with 
the bones of millions of the common people of all lands 
who had been sacrificed in the great game of the 
Dynasts; but when it came to the settlement no one 
gave a thought to the rights or the interests of the 
nationalities. The Kings and their Ministers swooped 
down upon their quarry and fought like vultures over 
a corpse. They wanted peace; but they wanted peace 
with plunder. 

And in the struggle for plunder the chief motive was 
the aggrandisement of their dynasties. The map of 
Europe was redrafted with as little regard for the wishes 
of the people as if they were cattle in the fields. The 
dismemberment of Italy was confirmed by the surrender 
of Lombardy and Venetia to Austria. Sweden, robbed 
of Finland by Russia, was kept quiet by the cession of 
Norway. But it was the treatment of Poland which 
was the supreme blot on the work of the Congress, and 
in that treatment Lord Castlereagh was the chief actor. 



THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS 135 

His motive was fear of Russia. The Tsar, Alexander, 
who conducted his own case at the Congress, wanted 
to reunite the fragments of Poland under the Crown of 
Russia and with the concession of autonomy. To com- 
pensate Prussia for the loss of her share of Poland he 
offered to give her Saxony, which was not his to give. 
But there is no doubt that his intentions in regard to 
Poland were honest and liberal, for his subsequent 
action in conceding autonomy to that portion of Poland 
that came under Russian control is on record. But 
Castlereagh, dreading the advance of Russia so far into 
the heart of Germany, fought against Polish reunion 
under Russian sovereignty, and, with the assistance of 
Metternich and Talleyrand, defeated it, though only 
after the conflict had become so severe as to threaten 
a new war between the allies. Poland was left mutilated 
under the heel of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and the 
crime of Frederick the Great and Catherine remains 
to-day. 

From that Congress, in short, nothing but wrong 
came forth, and Castlereagh's scheme for securing 
permanent peace by an agreement to make collective 
war on any Power which attempted to upset the settle- 
ment came to nothing, not only because at the critical 
moment Napoleon reappeared on the scene, but because 
in such an atmosphere there was no possibility of an 
honourable and disinterested compact. It is not very 
profitable to discuss what might have happened had 
nations instead of dynasties been the governing factor 
in the settlement. But it is useful to recall the fate that 
has overtaken these ingenious jugglings with the map 
of Europe. The century that has passed has made 
ashes of most of the solemn covenants of Vienna. Italy 
has thrown off the yoke of Austria, Norway is inde- 
pendent, Hanover is no longer a possession of Great 



136 THE WAR LORDS 

Britain, Belgium is free (or until yesterday was free), 
and the kingships of Naples and Sardinia have vanished. 
What remains of Vienna is all bad. Finland is still 
enslaved, and Poland dismembered and crushed under 
the triple heel of the Dynasts. Had Castlereagh, instead 
of resisting Alexander's scheme for the reunion of 
Poland, directed all his energies to making that scheme 
a reality, to giving Poland not only unity, but liberty, 
he would have done a splendid service to the great 
principle of nationalism. And had he succeeded, 
Poland would have served as a check alike upon the 
ambitions of Russia and of Prussia, and would have 
contributed to a true equilibrium of Europe instead 
of that artificial equilibrium which is the unattainable 
dream of ambitious kings and intriguing diplomatists. 

In a word, the lesson of Vienna is that the way of 
lasting pace is by the path of democracy and not of 
despotism, and if the Congress of 191 6 is to avoid the 
calamitous consequences of that of 1 8 15 it must approach 
the problems it will have to solve from the point of view 
of national interests rather than from that of dynastic 
ambition or diplomatic ingenuity. Kant founded his 
vision of Perpetual Peace on the rock of Republicanism, 
and if he were living to-day he would not alter his 
foundation stone. So long as the world allows the 
Kaisers and the Csesars and the Napoleons to play with 
its destinies there will be war. I would have no King 
who wore a uniform or pranced at the head of soldiers. 
The head of a State should be its chief citizen, and he 
should come on to the parade ground as the symbol of 
the civic power. Make him a soldier and he will soon 
subordinate the council chamber to the parade ground. 
Give him a uniform, gold epaulettes, and a brass helmet, 
and he will soon begin to think of government in the 
terms of Krupp and Armstrong. His diplomacy will 



THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS 137 

be the diplomacy not of internal peace but of external 
conquest. It will look abroad rather than at home. 
He will think of his people not as citizens whom he can 
serve, but as soldiers whom he can command, and every 
art of peace, every victory of science, will be diverted 
to the purposes of war. 

In the black coat of the President we have the assertion 
that peace and not war is the goal of human society, 
and that the highest interest of the State is the well- 
being of its people. The day that the French President 
or the United States President should put on a uniform 
to review the army would be a day of sackcloth and 
ashes for all who wish well to those countries and 
humanity. Nothing but the necessity of wearing 
civilian clothes (and a limited term of ofHce) would keep 
so perfect an example of the Napoleon breed as Mr. 
Theodore Roosevelt from developing dreams of world- 
empire. Let France, after this war, look after its plain- 
clothes President. He will be in imminent peril. 

This is a digression; but it is a digression that is 
pertinent, for the main object here is to urge that when 
the Congress comes it shall be the democracies and not the 
despots who shall inspire its deliberations and govern 
its decisions. The settlement of 1815 failed because 
it put back the clock to the eighteenth century and 
treated Europe as a chequer-board for a game played 
by gentlemen with gold crowns and brass helmets. If 
the Congress that we await is not to leave behind a 
heritage of dragons' teeth also, it will have to start from 
the idea of the sovereignty of the people — from the idea 
that nationality is the only cement that will hold Europe 
together and give it lasting peace. 

Every other settlement will be artificial and doomed 
to failure. It was the mutilation of France which kept 
the wound of 1870 open. Bismarck knew that it would 



138 THE WAR LORDS 

keep it open and, in his letter to his wife after the Ver- 
sailles settlement, admitted that Germany had " gained 
more than I think wise, in my personal political calcula- 
tion." To-day she is beginning to understand what 
fatal folly it is to outrage a nation, and leave it nursing 
the passion of revenge. The Archbishop of Canterbury 
has wisely urged that, in the coming settlement, there 
should be nothing that could keep alive that passion 
in the heart of Europe. Let justice be done and full 
atonement made, so far as atonement is possible; but 
let there be no violation of the principle of nationalism 
to leave a legacy of revenge that will poison the future. 

The fate of Europe to-day is being settled on the 
battlefield; but this is only the first phase of the 
struggle. To-morrow its fate will be even more de- 
cisively influenced in the council chamber. The battle 
that will be fought there will be between the old ideals 
and the new, between the conception of Europe as the 
chessboard of dynasts and aristocracies and the play- 
ground of soldiers, and the conception of Europe as the 
freehold of the common people and the hive of its peace- 
ful activities. All the conflicting interests of human 
society are preparing for that struggle and for what will 
come after it. The Royalists and Clericalists of France 
are full of new and extravagant hopes, and the Prussian 
junkers everywhere — the people who hate militarism 
in all countries except their own — are looking for new 
victories over the democracy. They are talking not 
about the evils of secret diplomacy, or of despotism, or 
of militarism; not about the limitation of armaments, 
or the means of establishing a peaceful European society 
organised to make war impossible. They are talking 
about the virtues of conscription and the need of more 
ships; about that phantom, the balance of power, and 
(unconscious that they are echoing von Moltke, Bern- 



THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS 139 

hardi, and the rest) about the high spiritual influence 
of war. " While human nature endures there will be 
war," says The Morning Post with unconcealed satisfac- 
tion. " There are worse things than war," says The 
Spectator, its eye on democracy. 

It is time that the people were awake too, or they 
will find that the story of 1815 will be repeated to-day, 
and that, at the end of all this frightful carnage, we 
shall have started on a new century of armed peace and 
bloodshed — that, in fact, this world is still " the mad 
house of the universe." 

Few men will have more influence in moulding the 
future than the Grand Duke Nicholas, for the successful 
conclusion of the war will leave him one of the two or 
three most powerful figures in Europe. He has capacity, 
ambition, the passion of the mystic, and the skill of the 
practised man of affairs. He is, as I have said, the most 
popular man in Russia. He is, too, the power behind 
the throne. The Tsar is a man of sincere but shifting 
emotions, easily subject either for good or evil to the in- 
fluences around him. The Grand Duke will be one of the 
chief of those influences. It will be largely in his power 
to mould a new Russia. It will be largely in his power, 
too, to stereotype the old Russia. He has shown, in 
the vodka decree and in the manifesto to Poland, that 
he can make great resolves in the interests of war. Let 
us hope that he will show himself equally capable of 
great resolves in the cause of freedom. 

It is not unreasonable to hope that it may be so. 
There is in the strain of the Romanoffs a curious dualism 
which is absent from the Hohenzollerns. Through all 
the history of the latter house we look in vain for one 
great human impulse. It is an uninterrupted story of 
harsh and personal rule. But through the despotism 
and tyranny of the Tsars there has always run a strain 



I40 THE WAR LORDS 

of mysticism and humanity which has been the spring 
of fine emotions and large, imaginative deeds. It was 
so in the case of Alexander I., who was by far the most 
humane and enlightened influence at the Vienna Con- 
gress. It is so in the case of the present Tsar. He is 
weak and subject to influences, and his career has been 
a strange record of noble impulses and despotic acts. 
It is difficult to reconcile the author of the Hague 
Tribunal with the author of Red Sunday and the 
decorator of the Black Hundreds. But, while he is 
profoundly subject to external suggestion, the Tsar is 
at the bottom a visionary with a sincere though incon- 
stant tendency towards the light. As the founder of 
the Hague Tribunal the world will look to him, primarily, 
to make that structure a real defence against a recur- 
rence of the shame and horror that have fallen upon 
civilisation. In it we may hope will be centralised all 
the international forces, economic, industrial, religious, 
that make for co-operation. Its powers should include 
the imposition of an economic boycott on any country 
whose actions are a menace to the world's peace, and 
they should move towards the establishment of an 
international police for the preservation of the collective 
interests from the assaults of any brigand power. The 
Tsar, more than any single individual, will have it in 
his power to give the world the lead out of the shambles 
of the past. He can, if he will, be the great Liberator, 
not of a nation but of humanity itself. 



GENERAL BOTHA 

AND THE SPIRIT OF THE EMPIRE 

Among the figures thrown into reHef by the war none 
has more significance than that of General Botha. More 
than any one else perhaps he embodies the conflict 
of ideas of which the war is the expression. He repre- 
sents in its most dramatic aspect that doctrine of Empire 
based on self-government which is the capital contribu- 
tion that Liberal England has made to the governance 
of the world. There has been no braver or more 
momentous act of policy in our time than the grant 
of self-government to the conquered Boer States. That 
act was the supreme purpose upon which Sir Henry 
Campbell-Bannerman had set his heart in coming to 
power, and I have been told that it was only the force 
of his appeal in the Cabinet — an appeal that by its 
simple greatness touched more than one of those present 
to tears — that made that daring experiment in freedom 
possible. How bitterly it was opposed is still fresh in 
our minds. Lord Milner's vaticinations in the House 
of Lords were doubtless influenced by the sense of defeat, 
but they were quite sincere. He believed in the Prussian 
gospel of a governing race imposing its civilisation and 
forms of government, its " Kultur " in short, upon sub- 
ject peoples by force, and he saw in this concession of 
freedom to the conquered states the doom of Empire. 
In less than ten years he was to see the most startHng 
disproof of his theories of government that history has 
afforded. Had self-government been denied to South 

141 



142 THE WAR LORDS 

Africa, had the old wound of the Boer War been left 
open and angry, had Botha and Smuts been driven into 
the ranks of the insurgent Boers, South Africa would 
have gone, when the war broke out, almost without a 
shot being fired. We could not have raised a hand to 
save it. But it withstood the shock unflinchingly. It 
withstood it because it was free. 

Probably the events of the war have furnished no 
greater disappointment to the Kaiser than this. It is 
part of the general disillusion he has suffered in regard 
to the power of this country to play an effective part 
in the war. In his calculations of the material factors 
involved in the great adventure the Kaiser and his 
advisers were generally right. In regard to the spiritual 
factors they were uniformly wrong. They believed that 
the British Empire was a fiction that would tumble to 
the dust at the first breath of real challenge. It was 
an imposing structure, the creation of the centuries of 
good fortune that had attended this lucky but incompe- 
tent people; but it had no reality, because it did not 
exist by the sanction of the sword. Ireland at that 
moment was on the brink of civil war, and the govern- 
ment had not the courage to forbid the rebel rising any 
more than they had the courage to suppress the rebelli- 
ous women who were setting fire to private houses and 
railway stations and assaulting the members of the 
government themselves. The army, such as it was, was 
being openly exploited in the interests of the rebels in 
Ireland, and parliamentary government was on the 
point of collapse. I know, from one who saw the Kaiser 
in those days, with what interest he was following the 
drama in Ireland. " He could talk," said my informant, 
" of nothing but Sir Edward Carson, whom he had seen 
in the autumn. ' Ah,' he said, ' that is a man. He 
knows what he wants and he means to have it.' Again 



GENERAL BOTHA 143 

and again his talk reverted to this theme. It seemed 
to fill his whole mind." There is reason to believe that 
Prince Lichnowsky, the German Ambassador in London, 
warned his government not to rely on the Irish trouble 
as a factor in their favour. But it is one of the mischiefs 
of personal government that it develops secret channels 
of information, and the official view was set aside in 
favour of what were believed to be the direct and indis- 
putable sources of knowledge. 

Not less hopeful from the Kaiser's point of view was 
the prospect in India. For years there had been wide- 
spread unrest in the great Dependency. The disastrous 
action of Lord Curzon in partitioning Bengal had sown 
the seeds of serious trouble. That trouble, it is true, had 
been partially allayed by the Morley reforms, the visit 
of the king, the mitigation of the Bengal outrage, and 
the mild and judicious administration of Lord Hardinge. 
But there was much smouldering disquiet, and it was no 
longer confined to the Hindus, but had spread to the 
Mohammedan population, whose extra-territorial allegi- 
ance to the Sultan as the head of the faithful had been 
disturbed by the Balkan war and the apparent conflict 
between Christianity and Islam. For years the Kaiser 
had been cultivating the Turk, and assuming the role of 
the friend of the Mohammedan world, and there is no 
doubt that when the war came he expected that this 
country would be faced with an Indian crisis that would 
cripple its power of effective intervention in the Euro- 
pean war. But, as in Ireland, the domestic quarrels 
vanished at the coming of the greater peril, and the 
essential justice of British rule and the definite movement 
under Lord Morley and Lord Hardinge towards a more 
liberal conception of that rule bore remarkable fruit. It 
was not merely that men like the late Mr. Gokhale, the 
greatest statesman that India has produced in our time , 



144 THE WAR LORDS 

were eagerly for the Allies. That, of course, went with- 
out saying. In a conversation I had with Mr. Gokhale 
on the night before he sailed for India the last time his 
talk was dominated by his concern for the interests of 
Great Britain in the struggle. He was returning to his 
country a dying man, and I think he knew it, but he 
was returning with the desire to spend his last efforts in 
using his unrivalled influence over India in the cause of 
this country. But even the extremists flung all their 
energy in the same scale, and one of the most fervid 
appeals to India came from Mr. Tilak, the great popular 
agitator, who in the past had suffered long terms of 
imprisonment in connection with his propaganda. 

So far as the self-governing parts of the Empire were 
concerned, the German view was that they were negligible 
with the important exception of South Africa. There 
was the weakest link in that very weak Imperial chain 
that hung about the neck of Britannia. And, super- 
ficially, there was much to justify this view. It was 
only twelve years since the Treaty of Vereeniging had 
ended the Boer war; only eight or nine since the grant 
of self-government to the old Boer states. Memories 
lingered long among the dour, primitive farmers of the 
veldt, many of whom, the famous De Wet among them, 
had never accepted the Peace of Vereeniging and still 
nursed their stubborn hostihty in secret, looking for the 
day when they would be able to hoist the " vierkleur " 
flag once more. The elements of discontent were various. 
They had that strange visionary Van Rensburg at one 
end of the scale and ex-President Steyn at the other. 
They constituted a potential field of rebelhon of extra- 
ordinary promise, and it was not unreasonable that the 
Kaiser looked to South Africa as an important ally in 
his adventure. But, again, he left out of his calculations 
the influence of freedom in the affairs of men. And it 



iM'V&a?>«tAT<i>4 




General Botha 



GENERAL BOTHA 145 

is not improbable also that he miscalculated both the 
strength and the motives of Louis Botha. It was quite 
easy to do so, especially for a man of the Kaiser's 
histrionic temperament. For no man who has achieved 
greatness in these days has achieved it with a more 
modest carriage, and few men have known better how 
to keep their own counsel or to pursue their ends with 
a more bland obscurity — a mixture of simplicity and 
subtlety extremely difficult to penetrate. He has that 
imperturbable serenity that baffles inquiry, and leaves 
you on a casual acquaintance wondering whether he 
is merely dull or deep. Sir Wilfrid Laurier baffles you 
with the same serene manner, but in this case you are 
never in doubt about the spaciousness of the mental 
operations behind the external mask. But if it is not 
easy to come at the real Botha in a chance meeting, it 
is not difficult to discover the character and motives 
of the man from a study of his career. 

It is only sixteen years since Louis Botha slung his 
rifle and his bandoHer across his shoulder and mounting 
his horse set out from his lonely farm, a simple burgher, 
to join the commando under his old friend Lucas Meyer. 
He must have looked that day, as he always looks, a 
splendid specimen of humanity, tall, massive, broad 
chested, sitting his horse hke one who had been born to 
the saddle, hair and beard cropped close, eyes blue and 
candid, his manner slow and untroubled as of one who 
knew nothing of cities, but had Hved his Hfe among his 
flocks and herds on the sohtary veldt. And yet to the 
eye of Mayfair, so bright in those days with thoughts 
of the coming triumph and the splendour of the mines 
that were to be won, he would have seemed a ridiculous 
figure. David going out with his shng and pebble to 
fight the Phihstine could hardly have presented a more 
forlorn and hopeless spectacle than this stalwart farmer 



146 THE WAR LORDS 

as he set out with his fellow burghers to meet in battle 
all the resources of the British Empire. 

Nevertheless, if — remembering the Napoleonic maxim 
— you had looked in his knapsack that dayyou would have 
found the promise of most wonderful things, things much 
more wonderful than the marshal's baton which was 
there. You would have found the brevet of a general 
of the British Army. You would have found the pre- 
miership of the Transvaal, and behind that the premier- 
ship of a United South Africa stretching from the Cape 
to the confines of Rhodesia. And, strangest of all the 
ironies of history, you would have found the title to 
Groote Schuur. Down in the south Cecil Rhodes was 
dreaming and scheming to found a great South African 
union. The Jameson Raid had gone off at " half- 
cock." " He has upset my apple-cart," said Rhodes. 
But now at last had come the war for which he had been 
hoping and working. After the war, the union. And 
here in his residence at Groote Schuur should be the 
home of the first premier of the new British confedera- 
tion. He did not know that he had built an official 
home for that stalwart burgher who was setting out 
from his farm to give him battle. Time has had few 
stranger revenges. 

Surprise at the contents of the knapsack would have 
been reasonable. For there is no suggestion of romance 
or high destiny about Louis Botha. He belongs to the 
category of those who are made great, not by ambition 
or even by dazzling genius, but by circumstance and 
character. Without a despotic king, Cromwell would 
have gone to his grave remembered only as a rather 
gloomy and untidy gentleman who brewed beer and 
drained the fens. Without a foolish king, Washington 
would have had only a local and transient reputation 
as a quiet man of perfect morals and exceptional 



GENERAL BOTHA 147 

veracity. Without the discovery of the gold of the 
Rand, Louis Botha would still be on his Vryheid farm, 
with which thirty years ago he was rewarded by Dini- 
zulu, for whom he and other Boers had fought against 
the rival Zulu chief, receiving in return territory which 
became the " New Repubhc," and which was shortly 
afterwards incorporated in the Transvaal. 

But it was circumstance which furnished the stage, it 
was General Botha's own unaided qualities which won 
him distinction. It would be easy, on a superficial view, 
to underrate those qualities, and to regard his career as 
a sequence of surprising accidents. He is at no pains 
to correct this view, for he has no vanity, no postures, 
and is indifferent to applause. He does not wear his 
heart on his sleeve, is sparing of words and slow to burst 
into confidences. His manner is placid and equable. 
He seems to draw on infinite reserves of patience and 
contentment, and has the unhurried air of one who has 
always got his subject well in hand and has ample time 
for his purposes. It is said by his opponents that he is 
slow, that it is doubtful whether he himself understands 
the details of his own Bills, and that he seldom seems to 
appreciate the point at issue in a debate. It is true 
that he has not the parliamentary genius of General 
Smuts, who impresses one deeply by the acuteness of 
his apprehension and the agility and subtlety of his 
mind. But he has a breadth and simplicity of outlook 
that win confidence much more swiftly and finally than 
the supple dialectics of his colleague. 

Moreover, behind that rather bucolic exterior is an 
extraordinarily wary mind. If he does not say much 
it is not that he has not much to say, but that he has 
a genius for keeping his own counsel. In that he is 
not unlike Washington. " There," said Quincy Adams, 
pointing to a bust of Washington, " there was a fool who 



148 THE WAR LORDS 

made a great reputation by keeping his mouth shut." 
Louis Botha is as httle of a fool as Washington; but 
he can keep his mouth shut and his eyes open. This 
natural gift of restraint has been strengthened by a life 
spent in dangers and difficulties of many kinds — in the 
field against the Zulus and the British, in the pursuit of 
big game, in conflict with Kruger and his Dopper school, 
and later in the midst of the baffling interests of a 
country which offers more perplexing problems for the 
statesman than any country in the world, the problem 
of the Indian, of the native, of the Boer farmer and the 
British mine-owner, and of the relations of white labour 
and black. Mercifully he has been spared a Chinese 
problem as well. For that he remembers Campbell- 
Bannerman with gratitude. 

But with all his caution and kindliness there is daring 
in reserve and with it ruthlessness, as we saw in his 
handling of the great labour dispute. His measures 
then were without precedent in a British community 
for their severity. They won for him a significant 
approval among the reactionary influences in this country 
which at the time were turning more and more to coun- 
sels of force in deaHng with the problems of politics and 
labour. If labour was getting out of hand, then what 
so full of encouragement as an object-lesson in martial 
law as a means of calming unrest ? " Hands up! " and 
a machine-gun were such a simple expedient for dealing 
with insurgent labour. They had been the dream of 
many an anxious mind in England. And now General 
Botha had turned that dream into a reality. He was 
at last a really popular figure with English Society. It 
was a distinction that had no meaning for him. His 
action in the famous strike, whether right or wrong, 
was not due to hostility to labour, or to love of govern- 
ment by force. It was due to his habit of meeting an 



GENERAL BOTHA 149 

emergency with any weapon that the occasion seems 
to him to demand. His natural disposition is towards 
compromise and a reasonable settlement, for he has no 
fanatical tendencies in any direction and might easily 
pass, on a shallow view, for a trimmer. But though he 
will surrender the secondary things he never surrenders 
the essential things, and though his temperament is 
entirely pacific it has a formidable fighting quality in 
reserve. So long as a patient unravelling of the knot 
offers hope there is none more patient, but when the 
sword offers the only solution he takes it unwillingly, 
but very deliberately and even ruthlessly. He does 
not hesitate to shoot. " If we are at war, let us be at 
war," he said when Joubert in the early stages of the 
Boer war was showing what seemed to him too much 
delicacy. It was so that Cromwell protested against 
the nerveless spirit of Manchester. It is generally 
admitted by students of the war that had Botha been 
in command from the beginning the course of events 
would have been even more disastrous than they were. 
After the flight from Dundee, Botha, who had risen at 
a stride from a burgher to assistant-general to Meyer, 
was eager to cut Yule's retreat off, and if his advice had 
been followed Yule's column could never have traversed 
that terrible fifty miles of wild, broken country, and 
Ladysmith would have fallen. But Joubert was old 
and humane. He would not risk his men. And later, 
he granted Sir George White a neutral camp for his sick, 
relieved the British commander of a grave anxiety, and 
materially added to the resisting power of the garrison. 
Much in the same way, Lord Roberts later on greatly 
prolonged the resisting powers of the Boers by refusing 
to sacrifice more men at Paardeburg in order to complete 
the destruction of the enemy. 

But even more important was the failure of Botha 



150 THE WAR LORDS 

to impose his strategy on Joubert in regard to Lady- 
smith. He would have left only a trivial force to hold 
White in the town and would have descended with the 
main army upon Maritzburg and Durban with the 
result that we should have had to commence the recon- 
quest of South Africa from the sea coast. Probably 
we owe the possession of South Africa to-day to the fact 
that Joubert was old. How different a colour events 
took when Joubert died and Louis Botha succeeded 
him we have the memories of Colenso and Spion Kop 
to remind us. There was no mercy now. At Colenso 
General Botha saw, not unmoved by admiration for 
the bravery of the foe, Long's gunners galloping to 
death. But his admiration and pity did not check his 
purpose. He brought forward a body of his best 
burghers who shot down the gunners as they stood to 
their guns. It has been observed that in similar cir- 
cumstances Joubert would probably have said, " Let 
them alone, poor fellows. Enough have been killed for 
one day." The later developments of the war showed 
other qualities besides daring and ruthlessness. He 
became a tactician and a strategist of large sweep and 
rapid execution and like Lee and all great generals 
discovered a genius for estimating an opponent's 
intentions by realising his character. 

To this quality of cautious daring, he unites extreme 
moderation of thought. In his temper he resembles 
Lee much more than Jackson, for he has no fanaticism. 
And like Lee his heart was not in the war. He did his 
utmost to avoid it. Long before the outbreak he was 
at issue with the Kruger regime and his opposition 
to the old President in regard to the Dynamite con- 
cession brought against him a charge of using his 
position as a member of the Volksraad to help the 
mine -owners. He took an action for libel against 



GENERAL BOTHA 151 

his assailants, but withdrew it on an apology being 
offered. 

His subsequent career in the war blotted out all 
suspicions of his loyalty to the Boer cause, and no one 
questioned that loyalty when at Vereeniging, after all 
was over and he addressed the men who had followed him 
in battle so long, he advised the acceptance of terms. 
But it is true, nevertheless, that he is too cosmopolitan 
in his spirit and outlook to be a whole-hearted nationalist. 
Of Huguenot as well as Dutch extraction, born in a 
British colony (Natal), and married to a brilliant Irish- 
woman, it is not remarkable that he should not conform 
to the old Dopper view or be in sympathy with General 
Hertzog. 

The truth is that in their dreams of the future Cecil 
Rhodes and Louis Botha were not so far asunder as they 
seemed. Both saw a united South Africa as the goal; 
but while Rhodes thought of the British as the dominant 
race, Botha aimed at the emergence of an Afrikander 
people embodying Briton and Boer in a union, indis- 
soluble because the factors were no longer distinguish- 
able or separable. This purpose may be seen through 
all his policy after the war. It was this purpose, for 
example, that dictated his opposition to the Transvaal 
farmers' demand for protection against the neighbour- 
ing colonies. It was a bold line to take against his old 
soldiers; but he knew that if protection were once 
adopted it would be a fatal bar to union. How true his 
instinct was was evident when, afterwards, he carried 
his resolution for closer union with only one dissentient. 

The consolidation of that great achievement needed 
time, and time was not allowed. Less than six years 
had passed since Louis Botha became premier of a 
united South Africa when the supreme test was applied 
to the work of Campbell-Bannerman. The menace 



52 THE WAR LORDS 

which General Botha had to face came from two quarters. 
The first and the most reputable was the farmer of the 
back-veldt, the burly Dopper of the Kruger school, 
dour, unyielding after the fashion of the Ulster type, 
who had never accepted the settlement and wanted 
only to lapse back into the ancient rut of his fathers. 
With this element, of which that strange seer, Van 
Rensburg, was the prophet and General Hertzog the 
practical hope, General Botha knew he could make no 
terms. The dream he had realised of a united South 
Africa on the basis of a free Afrikander community, in 
which the interests of Briton and Boer were finally 
merged, was as hateful to these stern old Puritans as 
militarism would have been. From them rebellion was 
inevitable. But behind that element was another more 
treacherous and more formidable. It is not clear how 
far General Botha suspected the existence of the Beyers 
conspiracy, but if he had any suspicion at all it could 
not have been very strong, or General Beyers would 
not have been allowed to remain commandant-general. 
But the facts since disclosed show that Beyers and 
Maritz had been conspiring with the Germans for a con- 
siderable time, being especially active during July, and 
that Maritz had drawn up an agreement with the governor 
of German South-West Africa. It was with a view, no 
doubt, to the storm that he knew was coming that 
Beyers gave Maritz military control on the Union 
border where he would be conveniently situated for 
operating with the Germans. 

Whether he suspected the full measure of the peril or 
not. General Botha, with his habitual circumspection, 
was fully prepared for emergencies. He knew that his 
agreement with Lord Kitchener to raise an expedition- 
ary force for the invasion of German South-West Africa 
would be used as a weapon against him by the irreconcil- 



GENERAL BOTHA 153 

ables — that it would be said, as Hertzog did say, that 
he caused the rebeUion by that act. But he knew also 
that some rising was certain and that, apart from the 
invasion of the German territory, the gathering of the 
expeditionary force would give him the means for swift 
and decisive action. His decision saved South Africa. 
A weaker man would, in his place, have waited and 
temporised, and it is clear now that any delay would 
have been fatal. For the conspiracy gathered impetus 
with extraordinary rapidity, being largely favoured by 
the successes of Germany in the first weeks of the war. 
The effect of those successes on the opinion of the world 
was not realised here. Indeed the magnitude of those 
successes was not known here. The great defeat of the 
French in Lorraine, for example, was not heard of until 
much later, but it was known in South Africa and had 
an important bearing on the prospects of the conspirators. 
At this time the real danger was still undiscovered. So 
far as there was a rebel movement at all, it existed 
apparently only among the back- veldt Boers. Beyers 
was busy consolidating his position in readiness to strike. 
In all this episode this man's part was the basest. De 
Wet was a misguided man but he was not a traitor, for 
he had never accepted the Peace of Vereeniging. Hert- 
zog played an obscure and unpleasant role and, although 
his name was freely used by the conspirators, never 
repudiated the rebels. But there is no evidence that 
he actively or even covertly helped them. Even Maritz, 
traitor as he was, seems to have been a traitor because 
he had a real attachment to the Germans. But the 
treachery of Beyers was without a redeeming feature. 
His motive seems to have been one of sheer ambition, 
for it is evident that he dreamed of becoming, with the 
help of Germany, the President of a new republic. His 
duplicity was as skilful as it was shameful. He remained 



154 THE WAR LORDS 

Commandant-General as late as September 15, and so 
acquainted himself with all the dispositions of General 
Botha, and was able to forward his plans by placing 
men like Maritz and Kemp in control of the army in 
the critical areas. The measure of his ignominy is 
shown by the fact that on the very day (Friday, Septem- 
ber 1 1) on which he sent his telegram of good wishes to 
Sir Duncan Wallace, the commander of the force which 
was embarking for Liideritz Bay, he interviewed Maritz 
and Kemp and arranged for starting the rebellion on 
the following Tuesday. 

The selection of that day had a peculiar significance. 
It was the 15th of September. Now in one of his visions 
the seer Van Rensburg had seen the number 15 on a dark 
cloud, from which there issued blood, and following this 
portent he saw General Delarey returning home without 
his hat, followed immediately by a carriage covered with 
flowers. This vision was interpreted as forecasting 
honour to Delarey and a successful rebellion on the 
15th of a certain month. It is not probable that Beyers, 
deep in his German plot, was very much concerned about 
visions, but he was concerned to hnk up the honest, 
if stupid, Boer superstition with his cunning purpose, 
and the 15 th was chosen as " the day " for that reason. 
It had originally been the 15th of August, and a great 
meeting was actually held that day to inaugurate the 
rebellion, but owing to a peaceful address which General 
Delarey deHvered at the request of General Botha, the 
gathering broke up without result. The intervening 
month, with its German victories, had strengthened 
the plot, and Beyers counted confidently on raising the 
rebel flag on the 15 th September. 

On that day a strange event happened which, what- 
ever the truth about it, served Beyers' aims. General 
Delarey was riding with Beyers in a motor car at night 



GENERAL BOTHA 155 

when he was shot dead by a policeman who was alleged 
to have mistaken him for an armed burglar who had 
been carrying on his depredations in the district. The 
event startled the world and its effect on the Boer 
farmers was electrical. It seemed to suggest new 
interpretations of the vision of Van Rensburg, and it 
inflamed the smouldering feeling against the Botha policy. 
It has never, I think, been alleged that Delarey had any 
connection with the plot, and no one who knew that 
chivalrous man would believe it if it were. Among all 
the Boer leaders he was the most attractive figure — 
simple, gentle, and singularly winning in address. De 
Wet was stubborn as a mule and sohd as a rock. You 
could make nothing of him. But Delarey, who had 
Huguenot blood in him, had a sweetness of manner and 
a simple candour that won your confidence at once. 
But though he was not in the plot he was a name to 
conjure with among the Boers, and his tragic death, 
coupled with the story of the vision, which had had a 
wide currency, made the outlook very grave and the 
hopes of the rebels high. 

A false move by General Botha at this crisis would 
have been fatal. It would have been easy to be rash, 
easier to be too timid. But with characteristic wariness 
he tried conciliation on the one hand while strengthen- 
ing his military preparations on the other. His mediator 
with the rebels was ex-President Steyn, whose attitude 
throughout was wholly admirable; but Beyers only 
used the interval to fan the flame of rebellion, and when 
the stern, unbending De Wet openly joined him there 
was no hope of a reconciliation. The campaign was a 
swift and overwhelming triumph for General Botha. 
De Wet had either lost the elusiveness that kept Lord 
Kitchener so long on the run, or he was watched by one 
who knew his ingenuities too well. In any case he was 



156 THE WAR LORDS 

speedily rounded up. Beyers was killed in crossing a 
river, Maritz fled into German territory with his fol- 
lowers, and in three months the rising was suppressed, 
and General Botha was free to enter upon the task of 
driving the Germans out of South-West Africa — a task 
which he has accomplished with extraordinary com- 
pleteness and rapidity. 

It would be too much to suggest that all the dis- 
contents in the Transvaal have disappeared. That 
cannot happen while the Boer generation that is rooted 
in the past survives. But there can be no revival of 
the dream of the Kaiser — cherished no doubt since the 
day that he sent his famous telegram to President 
Kruger — of a conflagration that should end the British 
tenure in South Africa and strengthen his arm in his 
struggle for world dominion. The grant of freedom to 
South Africa had made it a bulwark of the Empire in 
the hour of need, and General Botha the champion of 
the British idea of liberty against the Prussian idea of 
racial subjection. The seed of liberty has never borne 
more splendid fruit. 



KING VICTOR EMMANUEL 

AND THE SPIRIT OF ITALY 

In the collection which will one day be made of the great 
speeches on the war, that of Signor Salandra in explana- 
tion of Italy's intervention will, for its mingled passion 
and dignity, take a first place. We do not want a better 
illustration of the spiritual oppositions behind the 
struggle than the contrast that that speech oilers to the 
clumsy brutality of the speech of the German Chancellor 
to which it was a reply. The anger of Germany at the 
intervention of Italy is natural, though a wiser man than 
Bethmann-Hollweg would not have allowed his anger 
to express itself in the silly allegation that Italy had been 
bought by English gold. If he beheves that, it is another 
evidence of that myopia which afflicts the German mind 
and makes it so blundering and unintelligible. But it 
is clear he does not believe it, for in the same speech he 
gibes at the King of Italy on the ground that he has 
surrendered to popular passion. There he is nearer the 
truth, for ultimately the action of Italy has been the 
action of the nation, motived neither by Enghsh gold 
nor diplomatic intrigue, but by a genuine passion for 
liberty. 

But the anger is excusable, for when the time comes 
to estimate the decisive influences in the struggle, it 
is not improbable that the first place will be given to 
the action of Italy. Had that country thrown in its 
lot with the Central Powers on the outbreak of war, the 
task of the Allies would have been so enormously in- 
creased that, in the light of our experience of the magni- 

157 



158 THE WAR LORDS 

tude of that task, we may even doubt whether it would 
not have turned the scale against us. The effect on 
the position of France, on the situation in the Mediter- 
ranean, on the course of events in the Balkans, on the 
action of Rumania, on the possibility of such an ad- 
venture as the expedition to the Dardanelles, on the 
economic position of the Central Powers, needs no 
emphasis. Italy was in a very real sense the key of the 
position. The Kaiser knew that, and in the great 
gamble of July it was the miscalculation in regard to 
Italy that was among his most flagrant mistakes. 

There was no excuse for that miscalculation. In all 
the revelations of the war there has been none more 
illuminating than the statement of Signor Giolitti, 
last December, to the effect that in August 191 3 the 
Austrian Foreign Minister told the ItaHan Ambassador 
that Austria contemplated sending an ultimatum to 
Serbia, and asked whether in that case Italy would 
support her ally. The reply was in the negative, and 
from that moment Austria and Germany ceased to treat 
Italy as an active friend. It is significant that there has 
never been any repudiation of the Giolitti disclosure, 
either in Germany or Austria. Why he made it is not 
very clear, for that extremely slim statesman has been, 
throughout the prolonged struggle in Italy, the mainstay 
of Germany and of the policy of neutrality; and his 
departure from Rome was the first absolute proof to the 
world that Prince Billow's mission had failed, and that 
war was imminent. 

But with that negative of August 191 3 it should have 
been clear to the Kaiser that, in the absence of a swift 
decision, Italy must be reckoned among his enemies. 
It was not merely that the Triple Alliance had been an 
empty formality since the Bismarck-Crispi days, that 
the wedge that Bismarck had so astutely driven in 



KING VICTOR EMMANUEL 159 

between Italy and France had ceased to operate, and 
that, on the other hand, the historic antagonism between 
Austria and Italy was only intensified by time. More 
important than all this was the instinct for liberty of 
the Itahan people. Their resurrection had been the 
greatest achievement of the spirit of freedom in the 
nineteenth century, and the sentiment of the nation, 
born of that achievement, was entirely with the demo- 
cracies of Western Europe. For such a people neutral- 
ity could be no permanent resting place. As the 
struggle progressed, political interest reinforced the 
human sympathy, and it became clear that the place of 
Italy among the nations was not tenable on the terms 
of non-intervention. She must strike a blow for one 
side or the other or lose her claim to be heard in the 
councils of Europe. 

It was fortunate that Italy in the hour of its momen- 
tous decision was not in conflict with the predilections 
of its King. Not the least of the assets of Germany in 
the war has been the extent to which the sympathies of 
peoples with the cause of the Allies have been held in 
check by the sympathies of Kings with the cause of the 
Kaiser. That is very largely the explanation of events 
in the Balkans. But Italy is happy in the possession 
of a King whose temper is as liberal as that of his people. 
He is in many ways the most remarkable monarch on 
a European throne. His eminence is not physical, for 
in that respect he is the least of men. He is very little 
over five feet in height, and even under the new minimum 
standard would hardly succeed in passing muster for 
the Kitchener Army. His poverty of inches is the more 
noticeable because his wife. Queen Helen, is one of the 
tall, athletic daughters of the mountain Prince of 
Montenegro. It is the jest of King Nicholas that his 
daughters are the chief export trade of Montenegro, and 



i6o THE WAR LORDS 

it is a trade of which the gallant old patriarch-King is 
legitimately proud. Three of his sons-in-law are now 
in command of armies of the Allies, for the wife of the 
Grand Duke Nicholas is, like the Queen of Serbia, a 
daughter of King Nicholas. 

But though Victor Emmanuel is inconspicuous in 
stature he is in character a man of quite unusual signific- 
ance. I do not here refer to his intellectual gifts, though 
they are sufficiently remarkable. They have none of 
the surface brilliancy of those of the Kaiser, for he is the 
least demonstrative of men. They have much more the 
quaHty of the recluse and the student, due no doubt to 
that weakly childhood through which he was nurtured 
by Queen Margherita with such unwearying devotion. 
This tendency to erudition is evidenced in many direc- 
tions, but primarily in the science of numismatics. This 
is sometimes spoken of as his hobby; but it is much more 
than that, for he not only has the amateur's interest in 
the subject generally, but the expert's interest in one 
phase of it. He is the first living authority on the coins 
of Italy, and his great monograph on the subject, 
Corpus Nummorum Italicorum, the first volume of which 
was published some years ago, is among the most 
important literature of the science, while his collection 
is said to contain some 60,000 pieces. To the un- 
initiated, numismatics may seem a blameless but 
anaemic recreation. It is in fact an extraordinarily 
illuminating science that opens the gateway to the 
romance of history and to the understanding of the social 
and economic development of human society. It is this 
access to larger things that gives it its appeal to King 
Victor, whose sympathies and interests are singularly 
wide in range. 

But it is his character even more than his intellectual 
equipment that makes the King of Italy the most 



KING VICTOR EMMANUEL i6i 

unusual figure among European royalties. He is the 
antithesis of the aggressive personalism of the Kaiser. 
One feels that here is a man who has reaHsed the modern 
conception of Kingship as it has rarely been realised 
before. There have of course been popular Kings in 
plenty, Kings who cultivated democracy and relied for 
their power upon its sanction and goodwill. But it may 
be doubted if there has ever before been a King whose 
convictions were so much engaged by the conception 
of the citizen King. King Albert is not less democratic 
in sympathy and taste, but in his case the motive is 
feeling more than intellectual conviction. 

This conception of his office, as well as the strength 
of his character, was revealed in a dramatic manner 
immediately on his accession to the throne by a decision 
of rare courage that shocked the conservative elements 
of society, but had a profound and enduring influence 
for good on the nation. He had, up to that time, been 
practically unknown. His modest habit of life, his 
student taste and his apparent indifference to affairs 
had made him a negligible figure. It was his practice, 
if any one sought to sound him on politics, to make a 
remark on the weather. The consequence was that he 
came to the throne an unknown quantity. And he 
came to it in circumstances as trying as any young 
monarch ever had to face. His father. King Humbert, 
had fallen by the hand of an Anarchist, and the horror 
of the crime had evoked a cry for stern repressive 
measures. But the young King was adamant. He 
would not confound democracy with the crazy act of 
an assassin, and resolutely resisted the cry for reprisals. 
This attitude of mind, while it shocked Society, had a 
remarkable effect on the nation. Within a fortnight, 
said a witness of the events of those days, the Italians 
" had passed from the depths of sorrow and shame to a 



1 62 THE WAR LORDS 

height of confidence unknown before to the present 
generation." The sudden revelation of the character 
of the new King had touched the deepest chord in the 
mind of a responsive people. 

Nor was it a passing effect. The plain, unceremonial 
life of the King and Queen — delighted with each other 
and devoted to their children — did not make them 
popular with " Society," but on the nation the character 
of the King produced a deepening sense of trust. His 
refusal to attack the Socialists because of the crime of 
a mad Anarchist was the keynote of all that followed. 
Within three years of his accession he sought, to the 
scandal of the Conservatives, to introduce the Socialist 
leader, Signor Turati, into the Cabinet, and in 191 1 he 
repeated the experiment in the case of the Socialist 
Signor Bissolati, who represents the Quirinal division 
of Rome and has the King for his chief elector. The 
incident offers a significant contrast to the case of Herr 
Liebknecht, who represents Potsdam in the Reichstag, 
and has his chief constituent for his open enemy. Signor 
Bissolati did not enter the Cabinet, offering as his excuse 
his objection to wearing the regulation frock coat; but 
the effect of the King's attitude has been to modify 
profoundly the asperities of politics and to make the 
Socialists realise that social reform is not merely con- 
sistent with constitutional monarchy, but may even be 
more smoothly attained under its influence. 

In all this the motives of Victor Emmanuel were not 
that shallow and insincere thing called " tact." No one 
uses that banal word in connection with him. It would 
be impossible, for he has never played the courtier to 
his people. Indeed, he is no courtier to anybody, and 
though he and his wife have always been conspicuous 
by their personal and humane service in connection with 
those terrible disasters that have befallen the people 



KING VICTOR EMMANUEL 163 

at Messina, in Calabria, and elsewhere, they have never 
used that service as a mere convention of royalty. In- 
deed, the King's plain intelligence is revolted by any 
such antiquated affectation. When he was leaving after 
his work at Messina an obsequious official explained how 
the presence of the King had alleviated the suffering 
of the people. " Don't talk nonsense," was the King's 
curt comment. 

No, the democratic attitude is not a pose, but the 
expression of a spiritual unity with the people, born of 
the history of his house. There are few finer stories 
in the records of kings than the loyalty of his grandfather, 
Victor Emmanuel, the King of Sardinia, to the cause of 
the Italian people. It was the House of Savoy which 
was the one beacon hght in the dark days of tyranny, 
when the Italian people were struggling towards freedom 
against the usurpations of Austria, the claims of the 
Vatican, and the cruelties of King Bomba, " the negation 
of God." Through all that tragic time the kingdom of 
Sardinia remained true to the cause of popular liberty, 
and as that cause, under Mazzini and Garibaldi, slowly 
emerged to victory in Italy the whole nation gathered 
round Victor Emmanuel II. as the symbol of national 
unity and democratic freedom. The settlement of 1866 
left the great work of Italian regeneration incomplete, 
for Austria still held the Trentino and the gates of Italy, 
but unity was achieved and time would fulfil the dreams 
of complete solidarity. The artful diplomacy of Bis- 
marck delayed the fulfilment. There is no feat of that 
astonishing man more remarkable than his success in 
detaching Italy from its natural ally, France, and 
making it the creature of its historic enemy, Austria. 
But diplomacy, though it may pervert policy, cannot 
pervert the soul of a people. The Crispis and Giohttis 
might make their alliances with Germany, but when 



i64 THE WAR LORDS 

the hour struck the nation would flow into its natural 
channel. 

And when the hour came and Signor Salandra re- 
signed, the people had not to deal with a recalcitrant 
King. Victor Emmanuel's sympathies had not been 
in doubt, but with the sense of propriety that never 
fails him he had made no attempt to force the situation. 
The obstacles in the way of intervention had been 
formidable. For once — but of course for widely oppo- 
site motives— the Socialist Left and the Vatican were 
in accord. The position of the Pope throughout the 
war had been extraordinarily complicated and his action 
necessarily obscure. Catholicism like Socialism is inter- 
national, but the desolation of a faithful Catholic country 
hke Belgium should in itself have brought to the cause 
of the Allies the overwhelming moral support of the 
Church of Rome. That simple issue, however, was 
shadowed by other considerations. In the great struggle 
for ItaHan liberty the cause of the Vatican had been allied 
with the cause of Austria, and the establishment of the 
political unity of Italy had sounded the death-knell of 
the temporal power of the Papacy. There had followed 
two generations of hostility between the Vatican and 
the Quirinal — the people united around the King, the 
Church regarding the King as the despoiler of its pre- 
rogatives and looking to Austria as its ancient ally 
and present defender. Hence, when the war came, the 
influence of the Vatican was directed to preventing Italy 
being involved in a conflict with Austria, and even 
Cardinal Mercier's great indictment of Germany's crimes 
in Belgium left the voice of Rome silent. 

Now, in his attitude to Rome, the King has been at 
once firm and correct. He neither yields to the Vatican 
where his true functions are concerned, nor does he 
indulge in idle pin-pricks. His attitude may be illus- 



KING VICTOR EMMANUEL 165 

trated by two incidents. The first occurred when he 
came to the throne, and was largely the cause of the 
instant impression he made on the nation. Where was 
the murdered Humbert to lie ? The widowed Queen 
Margherita wished him to be buried at the Superga at 
Turin, where all the House of Savoy lie, with the excep- 
tion of Victor Emmanuel II., the founder of the Italian 
nation, who is buried at the Pantheon at Rome. Her 
wish was governed by her desire, as a faithful Catholic, 
to avoid wounding the susceptibilities of the Vatican. 
But her son would not yield to what he regarded as an 
intolerable claim. It is related that he entered his 
mother's boudoir at Monza, pale and tired, and ex- 
claimed, " That is arranged — my father will have a 
fitting burial in the Pantheon." " Victor," said his 
mother, " I see you want to break my heart. You 
offend my rehgion as well as my affections." " I am 
sorry, mother," was the reply. " But the religion which 
is offended at a martyr being buried in his own capital 
and lying beside his own father needs radical changes." 
And to the joy of the Italian people. King Humbert 
was laid at rest in Rome. But, having asserted the 
political rights of the Italian nation in Rome, he was 
content, and when a son was born to him he did not 
add to the grievances of the Vatican by calling him 
the Prince of Rome. He called him the Prince of 
Piedmont. 

In the long struggle for the decision of Italy, the hopes 
of Prince Biilow were founded on the Vatican much 
more than on the Quirinal. It was known that the 
King would not intrigue against his people, but there 
was no doubt where his sympathies lay. Putting aside 
all considerations of political interest, his democratic 
view of monarchy dissociated him fundamentally from 
the ImperiaHsm of Prussia and of Austria. Even as 



i66 THE WAR LORDS 

Crown Prince his influence had been used to bring about 
an approximation to France, and his sympathy with 
English thought, EngHsh tastes, and, above all, English 
ideals of government was notorious. Early in his reign, 
his English enthusiasms were much discussed, and in 
the royal nursery the English governess. Miss Dickens, 
was omnipotent. Her decisions on English practice were 
final. It is related that shortly before the birth of 
Princess Mafalda she was called hurriedly to the Queen. 
On entering the room she found the King engaged in an 
amiable dispute with his wife. " Is it not so," he said, 
turning to Miss Dickens ; " the English always wear 
goloshes on the grass when it is damp ? " " I am sure 
they would not do anything so silly," broke in the Queen, 
" and even if they do," she added rebelliously, " that is 
no reason why I should. I have been on damp grass all 
my hfe and never took any harm. Ugly things " (refer- 
ring to the goloshes), " let the English keep them." 
Perhaps the story is an invention, but if Victor 
Emmanuel is not devoted to English goloshes, he 
is undoubtedly devoted tp English ideals. 

His action when the crisis arrived, and when it became 
his duty to deal vv^ith the situation created by the resig- 
nation of Signor Salandra, was a true interpretation of 
the spirit of the people. The resignation was the Prime 
Minister's final challenge to the foes of intervention. 
It seemed for a moment that they had won, but only for 
a moment. The stroke swept away the web of diplo- 
macy that had been woven around the position and 
released the feeling of the nation. And in giving that 
feeling free play Victor Emmanuel was not overborne 
by mob emotion, as the German Chancellor suggested. 
He was, as he has always been, the embodiment of the 
national spirit of his country. Italy, after a genera- 
tion of bondage to ideals which were not her ideals, to 



KING VICTOR EMMANUEL 167 

allies with whom she had neither spiritual affinities nor 
poHtical coherences, had broken the chains that Bis- 
marck had forged for her. The free genius of her people 
was released, and the passion for liberty that had re- 
generated her in the past found its true expression in 
the struggle for the freedom of the world. 



M. VENIZELOS 

In the great tragedy that has taken the world for its 
stage, there are many minor dramas which pass almost 
unnoticed, not because they are insignificant but be- 
cause they are overshadowed by the central theme. 
We have no attention to spare for the by-play. And 
yet that by-play has a vital bearing upon the main 
struggle. It may even turn the scales of victory or 
defeat. It was only in his heel that Achilles was mortal; 
but it was enough. 

It is for this reason that the conflict between M. 
Venizelos and the King of Greece, which resulted in the 
retirement of the great statesman, is of importance It 
was a disaster to Greece, but it was much more than that. 
It was one of the worst blows that the cause of the AlHes 
had yet sustained in the war. The heel of the European 
Achilles is the Balkans, that disturbed region which is 
so largely the source of the trouble and the support of 
which to either side would be so decisive a factor in the 
struggle. So far only two of the five powers in the Balkans 
(three if we include Httle Montenegro) are engaged in the 
war, the Serbians on the side of the Alhes, the Turks 
on the side of the German Alliance. For nine months 
the three other powers, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Greece, 
have remained neutral. Had they intervened on the 
side of the Allies the end of the war would have been 
hastened, for Italy would have entered the conflict 
earlier and the isolation of the Austro-German position 
would have been complete. 

The failure of these powers to intervene is due to 

i68 



M. VENIZELOS 169 

complex causes. Primarily it is due to that tragic 
episode, the second Balkan War, which left Bulgaria 
broken, defeated, and nursing a fierce hatred, no longer 
of the Turk, but of her Christian neighbours, Greece, 
Serbia, and Rumania. It is not necessary here to 
attempt to apportion the blame for the collapse of the 
Balkan League that led to the second war and the 
Treaty of Bucharest. It is enough to deal with its 
fatal consequences. With the Bulgarian people con- 
sumed with thoughts of vengeance on their neighbours, 
only a miracle could bring about joint action on the war 
between them and Rumania and Greece. And without 
joint action there was little hope of any action, although 
both in Rumania and Greece there was an overwhelming 
popular demand for war. 

Now there was one man and one man only who was 
capable of working the miracle. It was M. Venizelos, 
the Greek Premier. M. Venizelos is among the greatest 
statesmen in Europe to-day. That is a large claim, 
but history wiU ratify it. His public career, so far as 
Europe is concerned, extends over only five years, but 
in that time he has revealed to the world one of the 
most remarkable personahties in the political history 
of Europe. He has been compared to Cavour, to Gam- 
betta, to Bismarck. The fact is significant of the impres- 
sion he creates. You look for his parallel only in the 
ranks of the greatest. But the comparison with Bis- 
marck, while true in regard to his relation to Greece, is 
monstrous in relation to the man. Brutal force was 
the dominant note of Bismarck. There is force in 
Venizelos too, a high courage that led him out into the 
mountains of Crete at the head of his rebels when Prince 
George of Greece, the High Commissioner, dared to play 
the autocrat in that httle island. 

But it is force governed by a spiritual motive and a 



170 THE WAR LORDS 

humane wisdom that suggests the Lincolns and the 
Mazzinis rather than the Bismarcks. The mere pre- 
sence of the man is singularly assuring. I recall that 
famous dinner given to the Balkan delegates in London 
in the midst of the first Balkan War when all our hopes 
were so high, and I remember how the personaHty of 
the man stood out from the commonplace figures of his 
colleagues. And the impression was deepened by per- 
sonal contact. He pervades the atmosphere with the 
sense of high purpose and noble sympathies. It is not 
his strength that you remember, but a certain illumin- 
ated and illuminating benevolence, a comprehensive 
humanity, a general friendliness of demeanour. He is 
in temperament what one may call a positive- — a man 
of sympathies rather than antipathies, winning by the 
affections more than by diplomacy or cunning. He is 
singularly free from the small ingenuities and falsities 
of politics, and in all circumstances exhibits a simple 
candour and directness so unusual as to be almost 
incredible. But for the conviction that his personahty 
conveys, you would believe that such frankness was 
only the subtle disguise of an artful poHtician. It is 
instead the mark of a man great enough to be himself, 
to declare his purposes, to live always in the Hght, fearless 
of consequences. Whether his opponent be king or 
people, he will tell the truth, without bitterness but 
without hesitation, for he is neither demagogue nor 
courtier. We have seen with what firmness of mind he 
can face the throne — that throne which he has done 
more than any man to make secure. But he can face 
the people with equal firmness. Right at the threshold 
of his career in Greece he showed this quality in circum- 
stances of unusual difficulty. The lamentable condi- 
tion of public affairs had reduced the country to despair. 
It seemed to have fallen among thieves. Its pubHc 



M. VENIZELOS 171 

life was corrupt, its government a system of " Rota- 
tivist " plunder, its taxation crushing to the poor, its 
army (as the war with Turkey in 1897 had shown) a 
sham and its navy a shadow. The position culminated 
in the military coup 3^ Hat of 1908, but the military 
League could not build the foundations of a new Greece, 
and the country cried out for a man. But where was 
he to be found in the midst of the little nests of political 
intriguers who had brought Greece to chaos ? 

It was then that the mind of the country turned to 
Crete. In that island a remarkable figure had appeared 
in politics. He was a Cretan, but a Cretan of Athenian 
origin, whose grandfather had fled from Greece a 
hundred years or so ago to escape the tyranny of the 
Turk. In the troubled events that led to the Hberation 
of Crete from the Turk and its right of self-government 
under the suzerainty of the Sultan, this young barrister 
had been the leader of his people and he became the 
President of the new Cretan National Assembly. But 
the advent of Prince George, the brother of the present 
King of Greece, as High Commissioner was followed by 
a serious conflict between him and his Minister. Prince 
George aimed at governing the island despotically, but 
Venizelos had not overthrown the despotism of the Turk 
in order to set up a new despotism from Greece. He 
resigned office, put on his military uniform, and headed 
the insurrection of 1905 which led to the fall of Prince 
George and his disappearance to the seclusion of Paris, 
the refuge of all discredited potentates. Venizelos re- 
turned to power under a new High Commissioner, M. 
Zaimis, but the magic of his personality and the fame 
of his exploits had fired new hopes in Greece, and in the 
confusion of 1909, when the throne was trembling and 
the very nation seemed in dissolution, the democracy 
of Greece appealed to the man who had saved Crete to 



172 THE WAR LORDS 

come and be its saviour also. And the late King George, 
pocketing the outrage that had been put upon his son 
by this man, wisely joined in the appeal. 

He came and Greece hailed him as its deliverer; but 
he had smooth words neither for the King nor for the 
people. " We must tell the truth," he said, " to those 
above and those below." The Crown, he declared, had 
usurped too large a place in the functions of Govern- 
ment. And the democracy cried " A Daniel, a Daniel." 
But when the populace sought to convert his Revisionary 
Chamber into a Constituent Assembly which the King 
could not dissolve he stood by his bond. In front of 
his hotel in Athens the crowd corrected his word " Re- 
visionary " by shouting " Constituent ! Constituent ! " 
but he simply proceeded with his speech, repeating 
" Revisionary " as though he was deaf to the storm of 
interruption. And at last the crowd, in sheer astonish- 
ment at this rebuke from a popular orator, were silenced. 
They had found a leader, not a demagogue. 

That is the man. More than any one in politics to- 
day, he seems to come into affairs with a large inspira- 
tion outside aU the petty considerations of parties and 
creeds, outside even mere national considerations. He 
is not a Cretan only, nor a Greek only; he is first and 
foremost a great European. He has that detachment 
of mind that is the strength of Sir Edward Grey, but he 
fuses it with an instructed idealism that adds the quality 
of the prophet to the wisdom of the statesman. In 
Greece he has wrought a miracle so swift, so convincing, 
that the popular reverence for him has something of 
idolatry mixed with it. He is regarded as the saviour, 
the regenerator, not of Greece only, but of the Hellenic 
idea. He found the country a by- word for the squalor 
of its pubHc life and for the vulgar Chauvinism of its 
pohticians. He has redeemed its administration, en- 



M. VENIZELOS 173 

nobled its spirit, doubled its area. In two short years 
he gave it a new and stable constitution, set the throne 
on its feet, reformed the army and navy, swept away the 
iniquitous taxation of the poor, redressed the miserable 
lot of the peasantry. 

But the greatest gift he offered to the Greeks was a 
larger and nobler vision of their relations to their neigh- 
bours. The old bitter quarrel with Bulgaria yielded 
to his fine doctrine that " we have not only to think of 
our own rights, but of the rights of others." He sought 
the regeneration not only of Greece, but of the Balkans, 
and largely under his inspiration there came to birth 
that Balkan League which wrought the overthrow of 
the Turk, and seemed to have cleared the clouds from 
South - Eastern Europe for ever. The miserable col- 
lapse of that splendid enterprise was the work of malign 
influences from without and of vain ambitions within. 
How chivalrously Venizelos strove to avert the disaster 
is known. He risked even his authority in Greece by 
the concessions which he offered, for they included 
Kavala itself; but his magnanimity was in vain. The 
artful policy of Austria and the folly of Russia re- 
awakened the slumbering fires of Balkan dissension. 
Serbia broke the pact with Bulgaria, and Bulgaria 
turned on her and Greece and suffered a swift and over- 
whelming disappointment. And it was that tragedy 
which kept the Balkan States out of the ranks of the 
Allies when the great war came. 

But when that war came Venizelos very nearly repeated 
his miracle — ^very nearly rebuilt the Balkan League and 
threw its sword into the scale of the AlHes. Why did he 
fail ? " Kings," said a wise man who had known much 
of Courts, " are always the same. They never forget 
and they never forgive. They think of events only in 
the light of their own dignity." King Constantine is a 



174 THE WAR LORDS 

popular monarch. He has fought two successful wars 
(with the army that Venizelos recreated), and he has 
many excellent qualities. But he has not forgotten the 
indignity that Venizelos inflicted on his house in turn- 
ing his brother out of Crete. He owes his throne to the 
statesman ; but he owes him a grudge also and a grudge 
is always more enduring than gratitude. Moreover, 
his wife is a sister of the Kaiser and his sympathies in 
the war are naturally opposed to those of his people. 
Did he not, after the second Balkan War, flatter the 
Kaiser by saying that Greece owed its military success 
to Germany? It was a grotesque fable, for it was the 
French whom Venizelos had called in to reform the Army 
just as it was the English to whom he turned to reform 
the Navy. But there was this measure of truth in the 
flattery that the Greek officers had graduated in the 
German military academies. And this fact brings us 
to another cause of the defeat of Venizelos. The 
mihtary leaders, unlike the people, are pro-German. 
That is natural. The militarist mind is always Prussian. 
It would be Prussian here if we were not fighting Prussia ; 
for its unchanging doctrine is that of government by the 
sword. Finally, there was ranged against Venizelos 
all the crowd of tricky politicians whom he had swept 
out of power. They did not care about the war, or the 
Balkans, or democratic ideas. All they wanted was 
revenge on the great man who had stopped their pilfering 
pohtics and regenerated Greece and the Greek name. 

So while Venizelos was working to blot out the 
grievances of Bulgaria, rebuild the League, and bring the 
Balkan powers with a united front to the support of the 
Allies and of the cause of the small nations, his enemies 
were working for his defeat. His scheme was simple. 
With that magnanimity which dwells outside racial 
bitterness and is prepared to make great sacrifices to 



M. VENIZELOS 175 

achieve great ends, he proposed to surrender Drama, 
Kavala, and Sarishaban to Bulgaria, with proper safe- 
guards from the AUies in the case of failure and with 
the understanding that Greece would be rewarded after 
the war by the cession of the vilayet of Smyrna in Asia 
Minor which is pre-eminently Greek. Moreover, Bulgaria's 
grievance in regard to Macedonia was to be redressed by 
Serbia. It was a bold policy, calculated to arouse much 
opposition in Greece, which regards Kavala as the key to 
Salonika. But the prestige of Venizelos is so high that 
he would have carried the country with him. 

Indeed, it seemed in February that his policy had 
won at home if not abroad. It was still doubtful 
whether Bulgaria could be reconciled on his terms for 
Ferdinand was pro-Austrian in sympathy, and though 
he would follow the line of personal advantage it was 
not yet clear that that line was on the side of the Alhes. 
And his people certainly had reason for regarding the 
gifts of the Greeks with distrust. They had behaved 
badly in the second war, but so had their neighbours in 
Serbia and Greece, and the settlement of Bucharest was a 
flagrant wrong. They knew that they held the key of the 
Balkan position, that their intervention on either side 
would be a vital factor, and they were not disposed to 
sell themselves cheap. They had borne the brunt of the 
burden in clearing the Turks out of the Balkans and they 
had got Httle for their pains, and now they were disposed 
to drive a stern bargain and to get their own back out 
of the necessities of the belligerents. They did not want 
promises, but the immediate " delivery of the goods," 
and after the experience of the Treaty of London that 
attitude was not unnatural. 

But Venizelos' wise action had paved the way to 
a basis of understanding and a decisive step by the 
Allies would do the rest. Their diplomacy unfortunately 



176 THE WAR LORDS 

was vitiated by Russia's own interests and ambitions 
in the Balkans, but a striking military success would 
serve. And there was no success which would be so 
impressive as the fall of Constantinople. It would put 
the Turks out of action, open up the Black Sea, and 
bring the Balkan States together on the side of the Allies. 
It was from these considerations that the idea of the 
attack on the Dardanelles sprang. It was a daring 
mihtary adventure, but its motive was poHtical. It 
was viewed with much disfavour by the British Admir- 
alty, which I think took the view that at all events so 
great an enterprise should not be entered on until mihtary 
support could be given to the naval operations. But the 
objections were over-ruled and the experiment of an 
exclusively naval attackwas made with disastrous results. 
It is probable that it would not have been made in 
that form and at that time had not the AUies beheved 
that Venizelos would "win through." They were 
confident of large mihtary support from Greece and 
perhaps gambled a httle heavily for a stake so valuable 
as the support of all the Balkan States. That Venizelos 
did not consciously mislead goes without saying. He 
knew that he could answer for the Government of which 
he was the head and for the nation of which he was the 
trusted leader. He did not know that he could not 
answer for the king and that at the critical moment he 
would be deserted. Nor had he any ground for suspicion 
on the point. His scheme was, he says, endorsed by 
the king; but it was delayed, and in the meantime the 
intriguers, pohtical and mihtary, secured his Parhamen- 
tary overthrow. He resigned and the new Government 
of Gounaris set themselves to employ every device to 
delay an appeal to the country which they knew would 
result in the overwhelming return of the great Liberal 
leader. With clumsy recklessness they sought to destroy 




M. \^enizelos 



M. VENIZELOS 177 

him. They declared that his proposal to give Kavala to 
Bulgaria was not authorised by the king. 

With characteristic directness, Venizelos appealed to 
King Constantine to clear his reputation and to defend 
him from insult. The king did neither. He did not 
even reply personally to the greatest servant that the 
throne of Greece has ever had. He replied through the 
Government and his reply was to the effect that Venizelos 
had misunderstood him. The retort of Venizelos was 
instant. He could not bandy words with his sovereign ; 
but neither could he remain in public life under the 
accusation. He announced his retirement from politics 
as the only service that remained for him to perform 
for the king and the only course due to his own good name. 

His temporary fall will rank among the most serious 
disasters of the war. It is true that his return to power 
was assured. There was hardly a constituency in the 
country that was not prepared to adopt him and his 
personal prestige never stood higher. But the moment 
was critical, and his opponents knew the importance 
of delay. They put every obstacle in the way of an 
immediate appeal to the country and it was not until 
midsummer that the election took place. The result 
was as every one anticipated. Venizelos was elected 
by an overwhelming majority; but the King's illness 
created new delays and in the interval that had elapsed 
the situation had been gravely compromised. The 
Dardanelles enterprise had assumed the magnitude of 
a great war, and the Balkan situation, uncontrolled by 
Venizelos' wise influence, had moved in a direction that 
filled all observers with concern. The Balkan States 
were still detached, still consumed with their own 
separatist aims, farther than ever from that solidarity 
which was the hope of the Allies. The sky which had 
been so bright in January had become dark with menace. 

M 



KING GUSTAV 

The Prussian doctrine of the unprovoked or "preventive" 
war has two advantages. It means military preparedness 
and diplomatic preparedness. Germany began the war not 
only with an overwhelming military advantage, but with 
an equally and almost more dangerous diplomatic ad- 
vantage. With the bursting of the storm it revealed its 
concealed batteries in every country. Its agents were 
active from India to Chih, and — ^while the British Press 
Censor was performing his amazing feats of suppression, 
including the suppression of Sir Edward Grey's speech 
of August 3rd — its apologists were stating the German 
case in every tongue and giving neutral opinion the 
inspiration of Berlin. It was Bismarck who first taught 
Germany how to make the Press an engine of diplomacy. 
The revelations of Busch, his press agent, are a record 
of unexampled pohtical cunning and immorality and 
of journalistic servility. His tradition survived his 
fall, and when the war broke out the Allies for a time 
found themselves beaten out of the field by the German 
propaganda in neutral countries. Britain, as the central 
ganglion of the cable system of the world, had the 
mechanical advantage, but it did not know how to use 
it. Nowhere was the lead of the Germans more con- 
spicuous than in the Scandinavian countries, which, by 
an unfortunate arrangement, had been in the habit of 
receiving their supply of news from Renter's through 
Wolff's Bureau in Berlin. The Bureau is for all practical 
purposes a department of the German Foreign Office, 

and it followed that when the crash came the Scandi- 

178 



KING GUSTAV 179 

navian countries were fed direct from the Wilhelmstrasse 
and were kept in almost complete ignorance of the 
English case. The mischief was corrected in time, for 
of course the connection of Renter with Wolff was 
instantly broken, but grave harm had been done and 
the most serious peril only narrowly avoided. 

For the situation in Sweden was one which justified 
the Kaiser in indulging in extravagant hopes that the 
country would give him practical sympathy if not active 
support. It had just passed through a serious national 
crisis, but it had passed through it without a real settle- 
ment of the issues that had been raised, and it was con- 
ceivable that the outbreak of war would fan those issues 
into a blaze, and that the nation, in spite of its passion 
for peace and its spiritual attachment to the cause of 
the Allies, would be stampeded into war. We can best 
appreciate the position by examining the crisis and its 
causes. 

The crisis had long been foreseen by those who were 
familiar with the character and career of King Gustav V. 
and the democratic spirit of the Swedish people. A 
collision between two such discordant elements was 
inevitable. That it occurred on the Russian issue 
showed that the king had astuteness. He could not 
have challenged the principle of constitutional govern- 
ment in circumstances which gave him a better fighting 
chance of success. He seized an opportunity which 
enabled him to assume the role of the patriotic king at 
a moment when the mind of the country was genuinely 
disturbed by a vague external menace. The menace of 
course came from Russia, and it was aggravated by the 
fate of Finland. That unhappy country, with its brave 
people, its free institutions, and its splendid intellectual 
enthusiasm, had fallen under the remorseless heel of its 
great neighbour. There is no tragedy in Europe more 



i8o THE WAR LORDS 

bitter than that of this small and highly civilised race, 
frowned upon by the guns of an alien fortress, its judges 
flung into prison, its freedom destroyed, its land over- 
run by Russian soldiers, its railways all designed for the 
purposes of military occupation and repression. 

The fate that had overtaken Finland had shadowed 
the sky of Scandinavia. Throughout Sweden and 
Norway there was grave concern. What guarantee 
had they that the fate of Finland might not one day be 
theirs ? They did not find any in the public spirit of 
Europe which was cynically indifferent to the small 
nations, and they watched with deepening distress the 
sanction which England gave to the designs of Russia. 
Meanwhile the strategic railways that had been built 
in Finland were brought right up to the Swedish frontier, 
and the air was full of the rumours of espionage. There 
had been many gravely disturbing episodes, notably 
the attempt of Russia in 1907 to fortify the Aland 
Islands, which would have closed the Gulf of Bothnia to 
Sweden and placed the country at the mercy of its great 
neighbour. That attempt had been thwarted largely 
by the action of this country, but subsequent events 
had only served to keep the alarm active. Even so 
recently as the spring of 191 3 a troop of Russians had 
been over the Swedish border. The fact was kept out 
of the Press, but it could not be concealed, and it created 
the profoundest disquiet. In these circumstances only 
one feeling pervaded Sweden as to the necessity of 
national defence. If it was to preserve its freedom and 
neutrality it must rely on its own capacity to resist 
attack. On this point there was no difference of opinion 
between Liberals, Conservatives, and Social Democrats. 

It is when we come to the question of means, or rather 
of procedure, that we touch the point of conflict — or 
rather the point of apparent conflict, for, as I shall show, 



KING GUSTAV i8i 

the real conflict was not on external but on internal 
policy. In the autumn of 191 1 a great wave of Liberal- 
ism, comparable to that of 1906 in this country, swept 
over Sweden; 164 Liberals and Socialists being returned 
against 64 Conservatives. Mr. Staaf, a man of marked 
ability and high character, became Prime Minister, and 
he at once appointed a Commission, consisting of 
members of all parties, to inquire into the subject of 
national defence. That Commission had not yet re- 
ported, but two proposals had emerged. One related 
to the need of a large expenditure to make the existing 
defences efficient. With this need Mr. Staaf proposed 
to deal at once by raising ^^3 ,000,000 by means of a 
graduated tax on the larger properties. The other 
proposal was, that the period of service should be 
increased from eight to ten or even twelve months in 
order to permit of winter training. This proposal, how- 
ever, Mr. Staaf would not put into effect until the 
country had given a decision on the subject at the 
election which was to take place in the autumn of 19 14. 

It was on this question that the crisis occurred. The 
Conservatives, angry at the threatened graduated tax 
on big incomes — a tax made necessary by the condition 
into which their administration had allowed the defences 
to fall — demanded that the period of service should be 
extended at once, and the king associated himself with 
their demand. He addressed a gathering of peasants, 
organised by the Conservatives, and declared that " he 
did not share the view that the question of military 
service should not be settled nowT This challenge was 
promptly taken up by the Government and the people. 
A great demonstration, attended by nearly 50,000 people, 
was held in Stockholm in support of the Government, and 
as the result of an extremely unsatisfactory reply from 
the king to an expostulation on the subject of the speech 



i82 THE WAR LORDS 

to the peasants, Mr. Staaf tendered the resignation of 
his ministry. 

There was no reason to doubt the sincerity of the 
king in the matter; but there was as little reason to 
doubt that he deliberately chose the ground of his 
quarrel with the Liberal Administration. Unlike his 
father, King Oscar, who was an extremely amiable and 
conciliatory monarch, he had never borne the restraints 
of constitutionalism cheerfully. The great-grandson of 
Bernadotte, he should know as well as any man the 
perils of absolutism, for his great ancestor stood guard 
beside the scaffold in the Place de la Concorde when 
Louis XVL was beheaded and he himself occupied the 
only throne that connects us with the Napoleonic 
tradition. Bernadotte retained it because he won 
the confidence of the Swedish people, and because he 
discreetly deserted Napoleon for the Allies when he 
saw the inevitable end approaching. 

But King Gustav was not disposed to bow to the 
modern conception of kingship. He is that most un- 
fortunate of men a constitutional monarch with an 
absolutist temperament. In this, as in all else, he is 
singularly unlike his father. Oscar was genial, expan- 
sive, all for compromise and peace. He cultivated the 
art of popularity with brilliant success, made every one 
at ease and talked with extraordinary fluency and 
enthusiasm on any subject. He had a genuine taste for 
art, and his second son is one of the most distinguished 
painters of Sweden. Gustav has none of his father's 
bonhomie and as little of his taste for artistic culture. 
He is tall, thin, and ascetic, rigid in bearing and opinion, 
fond of outdoor sports, especially tennis, of which he is 
a brilliant exponent, and of bridge. In personal con- 
tact with strangers he is shy, and a conversation with 
him is difficult and full of rather trying pauses. " He 



KING GUSTAV 183 

has no sense of beauty and no care for it," said the late 
Mr. Augustus Hare, who in 1878, when Prince Gustav 
was in his twentieth year, acted as his travelling tutor, 
accompanying him to Rome and London, " but he has 
the most transparent, truthful, simple, loyal character 
I have known." 

His father was a charmeur, and gave one the impres- 
sion of insincerity. King Gustav is always sincere and 
always serious. He is not merely a teetotaler himself, 
but a temperance advocate, and in his earlier days did 
much by his example to further the cause among officers 
and men. His love of simplicity is notorious. When 
he came to the throne he refused to go through the 
elaborate ceremony of coronation, and on all occasions 
he discountenances pomp and display. His plainness 
of life and his sense of justice are illustrated by the story 
of how, during the illness of King Oscar, he settled a 
strike of the servants of his household for higher wages. 
Their complaints reached the ears of the Crown Prince, 
who called a meeting of the servants, took the chair, 
and asked each in turn his grievance. " You are quite 
right," he said at the end. " You should have told me 
of this before. I shall see that your wages are raised." 
His home Hfe has been shadowed by the uncertain health 
of his wife, Queen Victoria, the daughter of a Grand 
Duke of Baden; but there has been no whisper against 
his private life. 

But one may have all the private virtues and be an 
indifferent king, just as one may be an excellent Liberal 
in theory and in personal relationships an extremely 
illiberal and despotic person. Charles the First was 
rich in private virtues and personal charm; but as a 
king he was impossible. Cowley's description of him 
has been applied to King Gustav : " Never was there 
a more gracious prince or a more proper gentleman. 



i84 THE WAR LORDS 

In every pleasure he was temperate, in conversation 
mild and grave, in friendship constant, to his servants 
Hberal, to his queen faithful and loving, in battle brave, 
in sorrow and captivity resolved, in death most Christian 
and forgiving." 

It is unfortunate that with all his excellent personal 
qualities his public attitude is mistaken and autocratic. 
He would, like Charles, be " a king indeed." His 
admiration for the Kaiser has been much commented on. 
It is an admiration not only for the man but for his 
conception of his office. On all critical occasions Gustav 
has shown his despotic temper. When his father yielded 
to the Liberals in 1901 he was opposed by the Crown 
Prince, and in the conflict with Norway Gustav adopted 
a no less anti-popular attitude. Had he had his way at 
the time of the dissolution of the union between Norway 
and Sweden he would have resisted that wise act. 
Indeed, when the conflict between the two countries over 
the question of separate consular services — a conflict 
which hastened the dissolution — was in progress he was 
anxious to march an army into Norway to reduce, as he 
put it, " his father's rebellious and disloyal subjects to 
entire submission." It was even suggested that he had 
entered into a secret understanding with the Kaiser 
which would have brought Germany into the threatened 
conflict with possibly disastrous results to Europe. His 
action over the consular service led to Norway cutting 
off his allowance, and as he refused to retract his words 
it was never renewed. When the dissolution took place 
he sought to get the deflciency made good by Sweden; 
but the Diet firmly declined to increase the civil list. 

It is obvious from all this that a collision between 
the king and his parliament was inevitable. With the 
sweeping Liberal victory in 191 1 it was made imminent. 
The Conservatives, angered at what seemed like their 



KING GUSTAV 185 

complete and final obliteration, did not hesitate to adopt 
the familiar device of creating a Jingo panic against the 
Government. They coquetted with the militarists, who 
on their part were indignant with the Government for 
having for the first time appointed civil Army and Navy 
Ministers. And they found an easy instrument in the 
king, who told the peasants that he preferred to rely 
on the opinion of his military advisers. For months 
past there had been a growing irritation, and the disposi- 
tion of the king to take an independent line and to ignore 
his ministers steadily developed. The crisis was only 
the culmination of the feud. The king chose his ground 
skilfully. He had exploited a very real fear that per- 
vaded his people, and he had behind him the Conserva- 
tives and the country party. 

The election which followed the resignation of the 
Staaf ministry had left a position of something like 
stalemate. A large Liberal and Socialist majority was 
returned, but Hr. Staaf's own followers had been sub- 
stantially reduced, and of the three parties the Con- 
servative was now the largest. In the circumstances 
the king called on Hr. Hammarskjold to form a cabinet, 
the most distinguished member of which was Hr. Wallen- 
berg, the Foreign Minister, a banker and a man of 
stainless reputation, high capacity, and disinterested 
patriotism. 

This was the situation at the beginning of August. 
The internal crisis had passed for the time, but the 
issues that had raised it were only dormant. In the 
first challenge of the king to his parliament the king had 
v/on, but the struggle would be resumed. His partial 
success was not due to any failure in the democratic 
sentiment of the country, but to the distrust of Russia 
which was as prevalent among Liberals and Socialists 
as among Conservatives. It was that distrust upon 



1 86 THE WAR LORDS 

which the Kaiser relied in his calculations in regard to 
the Scandinavian position. He had much solid grounds 
for confidence. For years he had been watching the 
growing concern of the northern kingdoms about the 
intentions of Russia, and with that skill of which he is 
so accomplished a master he had assumed the role of 
the friend of Scandinavia just as he had made himself 
the patron of the Mahommedan world. His annual 
visits to the Norwegian waters were the occasion of astute 
acts of friendship and patronage (entirely wasted, let 
it be remarked, on the Norwegian people), and he had 
promoted the close intercourse of his country with the 
Swedish nation. That intercourse had become a domi- 
nant factor in the life of Sweden. In literature, as in 
commerce, the influence of Germany was in the ascen- 
dant, for the natural advantages which Germany had 
had been enhanced by that industrious attention to 
detail which is characteristic of the German system 
of peaceful penetration, promoted from the head and 
extending to the smallest interests of life. The Swedish 
people, with their love of peace, their devotion to the 
cause of nationality, and their advanced democratic 
lea;nings, were spiritually allied not to Germany, whose 
militarism they detested, but to England. That spiri- 
tual attachment, however, had little to feed on, for the 
English governmental system had no propagandist skill, 
and even the English news came filtered through Berlin. 
If the Kaiser was entitled to regard the fear of Russia 
as a sufiicient offset against the popular democratic 
sympathies of Sweden, he was equally entitled to look 
to the king for sympathy with his cause. His temper, 
as we have seen, disposed him to favour the German 
view of kingship, and he had a powerful domestic 
attachment to Germany through his wife, whose activi- 
ties on behalf of the German cause were so notori- 



KING GUSTAV 187 

ous as to evoke severe public condemnation. Finally, 
Russia herself at the beginning of the war gave the 
Kaiser substantial help by issuing, with astonishing 
folly, the forecast of a new scheme which practically 
meant the obliteration of the few remnants of Finnish 
hberty. The scheme was quickly repudiated or explained 
away, but the harm it did could be measured by the 
sensation which was reflected at the time in the Swedish 
and Norwegian newspapers. 

On the face of it, it seemed that the Kaiser had all 
the cards in his hand. He had but to play upon the 
fear of Russia in order to bring Sweden over to his side, 
and if Sweden, why not Scandinavia as a whole? He 
set to work with characteristic energy. Wolff's Bureau 
flooded the Scandinavian press with news made in 
Germany. But that was not enough. There Hved in 
BerHn a son of Bjornsen the dramatist. He had married 
a German wife and was in sympathy with his adopted 
country. What so natural as to convert a man with 
such a name into a newsagency for supplying Scandi- 
navia with the pure milk of the Prussian gospel ? The 
innocent Swedes might distrust Wolff. They could not 
distrust a Bjornsen. Nor was this all. In the crisis 
through which Sweden had just passed, a conspicuous 
part on the king's side had been played by Dr. Sven 
Hedin, the explorer, who had been in the forefront of 
the anti-Russian and mihtarist campaign. When the 
war came he was the hot gospeller of the German cause, 
and he was promptly commandeered by the Kaiser to 
visit the battlefields and write up the German victories 
for the enlightenment of his countrymen. Meanwhile, 
German missionaries were spreading the true faith in 
Scandinavia itself. Baron von Kiihlmann, fresh from 
England, where he had been the under-study to succes- 
sive ambassadors, was missionary-in-chief — a smooth- 



i88 THE WAR LORDS 

tongued person with an engaging air of frankness that 
only half hid as cunning a plotter as the Wilhelmstrasse 
ever sent out to lay diplomatic mines. Albert Siiderkum, 
the Socialist deputy, was sent to win the Swedish 
Socialists to the cause of German kultur, and Professor 
Wilhelm Ostwald followed with an unofficial bribe to 
Sweden in the shape of a Baltic Empire, including 
Norway, Denmark, and Finland. It was to be under 
the protection of Germany and the official language 
was to be German. The incident, like so many others, 
showed how German diplomacy defeats all its elaborate 
scheming by a gaucherie due to its lack of imagination. 
Sweden was outraged by the offer of a bribe it did not 
want and would not have. It had long since passed 
through the crude and violent ambitions that obsessed 
the Prussian mind. It had had its days of glory and 
conquest while Prussia and the HohenzoUerns were mere 
supers on the stage of Europe, and it had no taste for 
the dreams of empire' — much less an empire under 
German tutelage and talking the German tongue. 

But even without this sublime piece of folly the hopes 
of the Kaiser were doomed. He had all the cards except 
the ace, and that was with the Allies. For with a sure 
and unfaltering instinct the heart of the Swedish people 
was with free England. There was a powerful pro- 
German element forming at the beginning of the war, 
perhaps even a majority of the population, but as the 
desolation of Belgium proceeded and the British case 
became known the current turned definitely and over- 
whelmingly against intervention. Even the deep and 
not unreasonable fear of Russia was overborne by faith 
in this country which, whatever its failures, had stood 
for the cause of liberty and for the rights of the small 
nationality. The triumph of Prussia and of the gospel 
of might would be the death-knell of freedom, and the 



KING GUSTAV 189 

vision of a great Swedish empire was only a bait in a 
trap that would imprison the free soul of Scandinavia 
for ever. The tragedy of Belgium was before their eyes. 
What respect, what loyalty, what sympathy could 
Sweden look for from the authors of that colossal infamy ? 
Herr Siiderkum was given his hearing and his answer. 
It came from the pen of Hr. Branting, the leader of the 
Swedish Socialists and one of the ablest political thinkers 
in Europe. Siiderkum returned discomfited and Ostwald 
went back amid a shout of mingled scorn and laughter. 

The critical moment was passed, and the Kaiser's 
schemes had come to nought. Hr. Wallenberg held to 
the policy of neutrality with undeviating courage and 
arranged the meeting of the three kings at Malmo, which 
consolidated Scandinavia on a basis of non-intervention. 
And when, having failed to bribe Sweden, the Kaiser 
proceeded to attempt to coerce it by making its timber 
trade, the greatest of its industries, contraband, the 
failure of the German propaganda was consummated. 
The pro-German influence in high places was extin- 
guished and Sweden's neutrality secure. No country 
has had a more difficult path to tread in this war, and 
she had pursued it bravely and honourably. The Allies 
will not forget this when peace comes. 



MARSHAL VON HINDENBURG 

AND GERMAN GENERALSHIP 

There is an excellent story current just now which is 
not only amusing, but illuminating, and that for the 
reason that it was made in Germany and may be sup- 
posed, in some measure, to reflect German opinion. It 
takes the form of a forecast of the discussion of the terms 
of peace. Germany has won, and makes three demands 
upon England. First: an indemnity of a thousand 
million sterHng. It is accepted. Second: the transfer 
of the British fleet to Germany. Even that is accepted. 
Third: the transfer to England of the German corps 
diplomatique. It is too much. No, says John Bull, rather 
than that we will fight to the last drop of our blood. 

It may, in the hght of events, seem strange that 
Germany should be dissatisfied with the results of her 
diplomacy. That diplomacy, it would seem, has had 
some conspicuous successes. It has involved Turkey in 
the war and so added enormously to the gravity of the 
AlHes' task, and it has kept the Balkan States disunited 
and quiescent when every instinct should have prompted 
them to unity in the common cause of freedom. These 
were great triumphs, but they were the triumphs of 
diplomacy in corrupt conditions and working through 
the agency of puppet kings. Whenever Germany has 
had to deal with conditions caUing for more reputable 
methods, her failure has been complete. The mis- 
understanding of the spirit of America is the most con- 
spicuous case. She thought that America, because she 

was a non-mihtarist country, was a coward and could be 

190 



MARSHAL VON HINDENBURG 191 

" bluffed " into the acceptance of Germany's bullying 
conditions. Her only achievement was to convert the 
United States into a potential enemy of the first magni- 
tude. The failure of her great diplomatic campaign in 
Italy — though here it was conducted with much more 
skill and suavity by Prince Biilow — was even more 
serious. And in Scandinavia her elaborate preparations 
were defeated by her methods and ended in discomfiture. 

But it is not only in diplomacy that Germany has 
failed. It may be that there will ultimately be a revised 
version of the story I have told, in which the final 
demand of Germany will be that, having agreed to take 
her diplomatists, we shall take her generals as well. 
For if the diplomacy of Germany has revealed a capacity 
for blundering that has astonished all the world, her 
generalship has not redressed the balance. 

Nor is this a matter for astonishment. One of the 
ablest critics of the war of 1870 has said that the Prussian 
generalship in that struggle was inferior to anything in 
military history except the French generalship. And 
Bismarck's view was hardly less contemptuous. Through 
the letters which he wrote to his wife during the war 
there runs a note of unceasing complaint against the 
incompetence of the generals. He respects " good old 
von Moltke " and von Roon; but for the rest he has 
the most withering scorn. They blunder and blunder, 
and it is only the bravery of the men, he says, that saves 
the day. 

The truth probably is that the Prussian genius is too 
mechanical and too doctrinaire to be productive of the 
highest qualities of generalship. It is governed by 
formulas, and if the formulas fail it lacks that swift 
adaptability to new conditions which is the secret of 
the supreme commanders. The great maxim of Napo- 
leon, " Je m'engage, et puis je vols," has no place in its 



192 THE WAR LORDS 

iron regulations. In this it is true to the German genius 
which is methodical, intellectual, and industrious rather 
than germinal and inspirational. In all matters relating 
to the war which have involved careful thought, elabor- 
ate preparation, and an infinite capacity for taking pains 
the German miHtary staff have established their superior- 
ity. Their theories and anticipations, on the whole, 
have been accurate, except, perhaps, in the case of the 
employment of the close formation. They had foreseen 
the collapse of the fortress of position before great mobile 
artillery, and in all the detail of trench warfare, as in the 
reversion to the hand grenade and the application of 
every scientific means to military ends, they led the way. 
It has become 'an axiom in the British Army that any 
method the Germans adopt generally proves to be right, 
and even on such a subject as the function of the ofiicer 
in a charge there is now a widespread feeHng that the 
enemy has adopted the sound view. The idea of the 
officer setting the note of fearless gallantry to his men 
no longer holds the field unchallenged. It is magnifi- 
cent, but there are grave doubts as to whether it is war. 

But in spite of all this, and in spite of the magnitude 
of its strategical conceptions, there remains the fact that 
German generalship in the field has failed to achieve 
the results which were not only expected but seemed 
imphcit in the overwhelming superiority of organisa- 
tion and material preparation. 

It is probably the consciousness of this failure that 
is the secret of the extraordinary hero-worship of which 
Von Hindenburg has been made the subject throughout 
Germany. The psychology of a people is the truest guide 
to the reahties of a mihtary situation. Von Hinden- 
burg himself has said that the war will be won by the 
side with the steadier nerves. Now nothing has been 
more remarkable in the earher stages of the war than 



iia yyi ii . ■ » -js- ^nm i/mu m 







General voii Hindenburg 



MARSHAL VON HINDENBURG 193 

the contrast between the temper of Paris and London 
and the temper of Berhno Both in France and in 
England there is a sense of resolution, equally re- 
moved from fear and extravagant hope. Throughout 
the war there have been no popular demonstrations, 
no maffickings, no outbursts of hate or jingo frenzy. 
The temper has been steady, grave, determined, and 
very silent. There has not been, either in London or 
Paris, a single great ebuUition of public feeling since 
hostilities began. It is to Prussia that we have to go 
for the emotions of the war. Every success is made the 
occasion of extravagant rejoicing, the ringing of bells, 
the waving of flags, pubHc holidays, decorated streets. 
It is a people hungry for victory and snatching eagerly 
at every crumb that is offered. Their infantile hate is 
as significant as their infantile joy. An American who 
was recently in Berhn has described to me his visit to 
a concert at a covered beer-garden there. The patriotic 
songs passed with ordinary applause; but at the 
" Hymn of Hate " the whole audience leapt on to the 
chairs and tables in a frenzy of passion. That scene 
would not be thinkable to-day in either London or Paris. 
Its significance is in the fact that Hate is the child of 
Fear. 

But even more symptomatic of the " nerves " of 
Germany is the idolatry of Hindenburg. There is no 
parallel to the frantic enthusiasm that his name has 
evoked. If he had descended like an archangel from 
the skies, and swept the Russian armies before him into 
the Black Sea, there could have been no more extra- 
vagant acclamation. Towns and villages have been 
renamed after him; the Hindenburgstrasse would seem 
to have become as common as the Friedrichstrasse ; 
the Universities have showered their dignities upon him; 
Hindenburg marches by the score have come for his 



194 THE WAR LORDS 

acceptance ; hundreds of cigar merchants have implored 
him to permit them to associate his name with their 
products ; honours and gifts, telegrams and decorations, 
have inundated him beyond any precedent. An iron 
statue of him has been erected in BerHn, and the citizens 
crowd round the colossal image as if it were the image 
of a god. 

When one compares this prodigality of premature 
gratitude with the niggardly story of 1870, and re- 
members the growls of Bismarck because his son " Bill," 
after risking his hfe before Metz, could not, for all his 
father's influence, get a trifling recognition as a reward, 
we understand the change that has come over Prussia 
in the interval. This shallow^ emotionalism is a new 
growth. It springs from the same root as the senti- 
mental considerations which have so largely governed 
German military action in the field, leading generals 
to attempt tasks not for practical reasons but in order 
to keep an anniversary, or to placate popular opinion, 
or to conceal a real reverse by a worthless demonstration 
or by actual falsification. All this is so unlike the 
Prussian spirit of 1 870 as to predicate a new people. 

Now undoubtedly the achievement which gave rise 
to the extravagant adulation of Hindenburg was a very 
notable thing. The victory of the Masurian lakes, which 
resulted in the destruction of three Russian army corps 
and the death of General Samsonov — -not, it would 
seem, by his own hand as was generally believed — is 
the one indisputable triumph in the field on a large 
scale that can be put to Germany's credit at the end of 
nine months' war. Its military consequence has much 
diminished since the affair took place. Measured by 
the standards of past wars it was one of the greatest 
and most complete disasters in history, and in the horror 
of its circumstances — the shrieks of hosts of men and 



MARSHAL VON HINDENBURG 195 

horses sucked into those terrible swamps are said to 
have driven even some of the German officers insane — 
it has rarely been paralleled. But in the perspective 
of this vast war it is seen to shrink to small military- 
dimensions. Its momentary effect was great; but it 
was a self-contained incident and left httle permanent 
influence on the campaign, such as that left by the much 
less decisive defeat on the Marne which changed the whole 
current of the war. 

But that it discovered a man of bold, original powers 
among the commonplace, " card-index " minds of the 
Prussian military hierarchy is clear. It is even con- 
ceivable that it discovered the only first-rate military 
intelHgence that the war has produced. Nothing has 
been more remarkable in this colossal struggle than 
the shrinkage of the individual. Whether we look at 
the poHtical or the mihtary sphere, we find hardly a 
single figure that has added to its stature. On the 
contrary, the sense of personal failure is extraordinarily 
widespread. The fierce Hght that beats upon the drama 
reveals defects we had never suspected, and the strain 
of the immense trial is breaking the nerve of the strongest. 
It would seem that the vast forces we have summoned 
up are beyond the control of the human mind, that the 
monster we have created with all the cunning of science 
and intellect is crushing the great and the small with 
its fearful and ungoverned tramplings. Perhaps the 
future will see some dominant personal influences that 
commanded the hghtnings. We do not see them now. 
The best that we see in our own military outlook is the 
imperturbable stubbornness of Joffre. The best that 
Germany sees is the impetus of Hindenburg. " Old 
Hindenburg," as they call him affectionately — he is not 
old as generalship in this war goes, being only sixty- 
seven — belongs to that type which in normal times is 



196 THE WAR LORDS 

dismissed by conventional official minds as a man ridden 
by his ideas and in times of stress is found to be a genius. 
The special subject of his supposed extravagance was 
the Masurian lakes. About the military meaning of this 
marshy region there were two views in Germany. The 
popular view was that, in the event of war, the Russians 
must not be permitted to reach this region. The 
heterodox view was that of Hindenburg who main- 
tained that the Russians must be forced into the Masu- 
rian lakes. To this view he clung with an obstinacy 
that made him something of a " character," and when 
he heard that the Reichstag was about to consider a 
scheme for draining his beloved marshes and bringing 
the land under cultivation, he descended like a whirl- 
wind on deputies and party leaders and committees, and 
when all this failed carried his cause to the Kaiser him- 
self. There he prevailed. The marshes were saved and 
" Old Hindenburg " went on with his study of the 
region and every year at manoeuvres punctually drove 
the " Russian " enemy into the swamps. " To - day 
we shall have a bath " was the proverbial saying of 
the soldiers when old Hindenburg was against them. 
" They knew that everything they could do was un- 
availing," says a German military student of Hinden- 
burg's career. " If they attacked from the left, or from 
the right, if they made a frontal attack, or if they chased 
the enemy from the rear, if they were few or many, the 
end was always the same, Hindenburg entangled them 
hopelessly among the Masurian lakes. When the signal 
to break off the manoeuvres was heard, the red army 
was invariably standing up to its neck in water." 

But when the war came Hindenburg was in retire- 
ment at Hanover and forgotten. Indeed, it was 
rumoured that he was in disfavour with the Kaiser for 
having had the discourtesy to manoeuvre even the 



MARSHAL VON HINDENBURG 197 

Supreme War Lord into the Masurian swamps. That 
is doubtless a fable; but it is difficult to understand 
why he was not sent at the beginning to conduct the 
campaign on the ground of whose military meaning he 
had made a life-long study. Weeks passed and his 
offer of service was ignored, and meantime the Russians 
were overrunning East Prussia. Then the boycott 
collapsed. " Suddenly," to use his own words, " there 
came a telegram informing me that the Emperor com- 
missioned me to command the Eastern army. I really 
only had time to buy some woollen underclothing and 
to make my old uniform presentable again. Then came 
sleeping cars, saloon cars, locomotives — and so I jour- 
neyed to East Prussia like a prince. And so far every- 
thing has gone jolly well." 

For he is a garrulous old boy. Perhaps it was that 
quality that made him distrusted, for there is a pre- 
judice in favour of the silent man, who, after all, may 
only be silent because he is dull. Hindenburg is neither 
silent nor dull. He has something of the torrential 
gaiety and physical enjoyment of his job that charac- 
terises Lord Fisher, and he accepts the hero-worship of 
Germany with the unconcealed delight of a hungry 
boy who finds himself suddenly at the table of the 
Carlton or the Ritz. And he has humour. " Some- 
body," he says, " recently wrote to tell me that I should 
keep marching along the bank of a certain river — straight 
on to Petersburg. It isn't a bad idea and if the Russians 
would promise to keep on the other bank perhaps I 
would do it." He takes all the advice, and foot-warmers, 
and dignities that are showered on him cheerfully, but 
he is weary of receiving remedies for gall-stones. " Those 
gall-stones," he says, " are the plague of my life. Not a 
day passes without my getting sovereign remedies for them 
sent to me, whereas I never suffered from them in myHfe." 



198 THE WAR LORDS 

His failure to reach Warsaw during the winter some- 
what dimmed his lustre, for in war it is the positive 
achievements alone which command popular applause. 
But it is probable that in military history Hindenburg's 
campaign in Poland will rank as one of the greatest 
military efforts of all time. The first feint against the 
Vistula, followed by the apparent forced withdrawal to 
Silesia, and from thence the sudden descent upon Central 
Poland, was an heroic conception, and though it failed 
in its positive object it succeeded in a negative purpose 
not less important. It changed the theatre of war and 
destroyed the menace to Cracow, and with it the 
threatened occupation of the great province of Silesia, 
from which the resources of the enemy are largely 
drawn. In scope and execution it is the biggest thing 
the enemy has done in the field, and if it has failed in its 
main object it is because Germany has undertaken a 
task which broke Napoleon, and undertaken it, as it 
were, with one hand. Hindenburg is not a Napoleon; 
but he is a very able general, and so long as he is in the 
field we must look for bold and imaginative strategy. 

He will not save Germany any more than the super- 
lative genius of Lee could save the Confederate cause; 
but he does redeem German generalship from the second- 
rateness that is its prevailing characteristic. Von 
Moltke, who was apparently never more than the 
shadow of a great name, has fallen: von Kluck has 
not rehabilitated himself since, in swerving from his 
path to Paris, he made his fatal march across the EngHsh 
front; von Hausen has been under a cloud since the 
same now distant occasion; the Crown Prince has 
become a jest; the Crown Prince of Bavaria has only 
distinguished himself by a very foolish and unsoldierly 
attack on England; and the Kaiser's intervention has 
been attended with unvarying failure. 



MARSHAL VON HINDENBURG 199 

The Supreme War Lord, indeed, would seem to have 
been the supreme blunderer. It was he who is generally 
beheved to have been responsible for the failure of the 
attack on Calais which has been the crowning disaster 
to Germany. The strategists have unanimously con- 
demned the squandering of that attack in four separate 
theatres — Arras, Armentieres, Ypres, and the coast. 
The efforts were not all of the magnitude of that at 
Ypres, but they were none of them feints, and the lack 
of concentration is generally accepted as the true cause 
of that colossal and irrevocable failure. 

If Bismarck could revisit the field of battle, what 
apoplectic wrath would fill the old man at the spectacle 
that German generalship presents to-day. What letters 
he would write to his wife to whom he was accustomed 
to disburden his contempt for courtiers and kings. 
What brutal things he would say about the Supreme 
War Lord. But I think he would have a respectful 
word for " Old Hindenburg." 



KING NICHOLAS OF 
MONTENEGRO 

In the clash of the great nations, the people of Monte- 
negro and their King are forgotten. They answered 
the call to battle with the readiness of the most warhke 
race in Europe— a race that, encircled by great foes, 
has kept its freedom by its own unaided indomitable 
courage. But in the battle of miUions its Httle host is 
swallowed up as completely as the rivulet is lost in the 
surge of Niagara. And yet, in a very real sense, Monte- 
negro represents as truly as any the issues of the war. 
In all the history of the making of modern Europe there 
is no story so hke a primeval legend as that of the people 
of the Black Mountain. We may see the spirit of that 
people in their King. 

When Lord Newton visited King (then Prince) 
Nicholas of Montenegro at Cettinje in 1892, the talk 
turned on Gladstone. That great man had been the 
hero of the Prince. There was no one Hke him. It was 
he who had hurled the lightnings of his speech against 
the Turk; it was he who, in 1880, had estabhshed in the 
face of Austria Montenegro's claim to Dulcigno and 
secured the httle mountain kingdom its seaboard. Now, 
however, his confidence in Gladstone was gone. He 
was not the mighty ruler he had believed him to be. 
He was a fallen and shattered idol. What was the 
meaning of the change? Lord Newton found that it 
was all because of " Jack-the-Ripper." " Why hasn't 
Gladstone caught the villain ? " asked the Prince. What 
palsy had fallen upon that mighty arm that it could not 



200 



KING NICHOLAS OF MONTENEGRO 201 

slay a mere assassin ? And he shook his head sadly 
over the eclipse of so much splendour. 

The incident tells us a good deal about the King and 
his kingdom. Nicholas is the most primitive sovereign 
in Europe. He is like a figure out of the " Book of 
Kings " — a living memory of the antique world that 
has become a legend. He is the patriarch of a shepherd 
people, less numerous than the inhabitants of Bradford 
or Nottingham, living scattered among the mountain 
fastnesses of a country half the size of Wales. He rules 
them not as a king, but as the father of a family or the 
head of a tribe, giving them laws and songs and dealing 
out to them justice like an Oriental cadi. In spite of 
his early education in Trieste and Paris, the modern 
movement has never touched him. He remains a 
peasant among peasants. Pork and plum brandy fur- 
nish his table, and if he is alone he is indifferent about 
a tablecloth. He often sleeps in his boots, and when he 
rides about on his donkey with his fur cap on his head 
and his feet and legs swathed in rough cloth, he is indis- 
tinguishable from the least of his subjects. His palace 
at Cettinje is a modest two-storied house, only dis- 
tinguished from the houses around it by a flagstaff and 
a sentinel at the door. Cettinje itself is less a town than 
a village perched among the mountains — a village with 
two or three taverns, a chemist's shop, a photographer 
or two, a saddle-maker, and a sufficiency of tailors. 

In all this archaic simplicity he is the true expression 
of his people. There is nothing in Europe comparable 
to this little clan of mountaineers. The Swiss have long 
since been tamed by the tourist into the ways of civilisa- 
tion and the commonplace. William Tell has become 
an idle tale. Centuries have passed since the Welshmen 
used to sweep down from their crags and lay waste the 
outposts of the hated Saxon. They have found more 



202 THE WAR LORDS 

profitable ways with the Saxon than raiding his castles. 
They have sent a dictator to tax him and manage his 
affairs. But here in the mountains the dark ages still 
Hnger. Outside the enemy still prowls around. All the 
memories, legends, and songs of the people centre in 
their undying conflict with the Turk. That Httle band 
of crepe that you see around the cap they wear is a 
symbol of mourning — the most touching symbol extant 
in Europe. In it you may see the mourning of a nation — 

" a lamentation 
And an ancient tale of wrong." 

It is five hundred years since that tragic day at Kossovo 
when the Serbian Kingdom was destroyed by the 
triumphant Turk, and that black band on the cap 
carries into the twentieth century the bitter memory of 
that day. From the fatal field George Balsha fled with 
his remnant to the Black Mountain, and there for five 
centuries they have been entrenched, the embattled 
shepherds of the hills, wasting and being wasted, every 
man a warrior, counting his honours by the Turks he 
has slain, his sorrows by the triumphs of his foe — ^his 
Hfe an adventure, his very religion charged with the 
passions of a battle that never ends. There is no epic 
in our modern records Hke it. It had bred a race also 
unique — a race of giants, primitive, almost barbaric, 
fearless, Hke men to whom the atmosphere of danger is 
habitual: a simple, pastoral people, essentially mascu- 
Hne, belonging to the fourteenth rather than the twentieth 
century. The currents of our feverish modern world 
do not touch them. 

They would not, for example, know what the suffragist 
movement meant. Women to them are what his wife 
was to Charles XL of Sweden — " Madam, I married you 
to give me children, not to give me advice." They are 



KING NICHOLAS OF MONTENEGRO 203 

the toilers in the field — the hewers of wood and drawers 
of water for Man the magnificent. The Montenegrin 
never goes out with his wfe. The daring husband who 
showed himself in such company would expose himself 
to humihation and ridicule. If he pass her in the street 
he will avoid a look or a salutation. He himself goes in 
ghttering apparel — red waistcoat and gold braid, and 
fine girdle for his pistols, for all are armed. But the 
woman goes sadly in black, veiled. Give her a vote — 
how the mountains would shake with laughter at the 
thought. 

It is to the credit of Nicholas that he stands ahead of 
his people in this regard. He is proud of his daughters. 
" No exports from Montenegro," he says indignantly, 
" how about my daughters ? One is married to the 
King of Italy, two to Russian Grand Dukes who could 
buy up my country and not feel any poorer, and the 
fourth is Queen of Serbia. If these are not exports, I 
don't know what you call them." And he is proud, too, 
of the Montenegrin women, and has done much to hft 
them out of their servile state. To them, on the morrow 
of the terrible war with the Turks in 1876, he dedicated 
his most popular drama, The Maiden of the Balkans, 
from the prologue to which I give, from a French 
translation, these examples of his poetic eloquence : 

" O Montenegrin women ! I bless you ! You who keep so deep in 
your hearts the love of the Fatherland, who have accompanied us on 
all the fields of battle, and who mourn only at the end of the fight for 
those who have perished. 

" In your touching complaints you celebrate the death of heroes, 
and you encourage us to further exploits. 

" Harassed, starved, your feet torn by the hard rocks, your clothes 
in shreds, you steal towards us, on the frontiers of the menaced land, 
bringing us arms and food. 

" In the midst of the thick smoke of powder and fire, hard by the 



204 THE WAR LORDS 

cross, the symbol of our liberty, I have seen your angel faces shine, 
our sisters ! And giving way to my emotion (to the glow in my heart), 
I would fain have sung of your virtues, your sacrifices, your efforts, 
your ardent patriotism. . . . 

" On the banks of the Zeta my imagination met a woman who 
cherished the same ideals as yours. I put in her mouth your deeds 
and your virtue. I made her live in my lines as I saw her in my dream, 
so that she may serve as an everlasting model to the young women 
of Montenegro." 

He has a love for his country which only the perils 
it has passed could give. " It is not the largest country 
in the vv^orld," he admits — " not even the largest in the 
Balkans. But I would not exchange it for any other 
land under Heaven." And he loves his people too, so 
long as they let him have his own way. For he is an 
autocrat sans phrase. Once, it is true, he fell. It was 
his enthusiasm for Russia that did it — Russia his 
protector and his paymaster. When the Duma was 
established he plunged into constitutionalism too. And 
he did it thoroughly, manhood suffrage, all questions 
to be discussed, and so on. When he saw what it all 
meant, however, he clapped the troublesome leaders 
in prison with shaven heads and fettered limbs, then 
went " on strike " to his country house, and told the 
Skuptschina he would have nothing to do with it. The 
Skuptschina found that in the absence of such a vitally 
important part of the government machinery as Prince 
Nicholas the business of the State could not be trans- 
acted. They had, for instance, occasion to refer to 
foreign Powers on certain questions. " What is Prince 
Nicholas' view ? " said the foreign Powers. " What is 
your opinion ? " said the Skuptschina to the Prince. 
" I haven't an opinion," said the Prince. " I don't 
even exist." His victory was complete. The Skupts- 
china surrendered and implored him to return. 

Fortunately the conflict between the Prince and his 



KING NICHOLAS OF MONTENEGRO 205 

Parliament was bridged over by the Austrian annexa- 
tion of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which roused the Mon- 
tenegrins to fury. They had, in 1875, gone with Serbia 
to war to rescue their kindred of Bosnia from the 
tyranny of the Turk ; but when victory seemed assured 
Austria came in to defeat the reunion of the Serbian 
race, and since then the old hostility to the Turk had 
been turned against the new tyrant from the north. 
With the annexation of Bosnia in 1909 that hostility 
burst into flame. The people clamoured for war; but 
the old warrior would not have it. For with all his 
miHtary ardour and genius — and in the war against the 
Turks in 1876 he revealed brilliant strategic qualities — 
he has the caution of the statesman. Thrice he has 
withstood the war fever of his people, and it is the highest 
tribute to his bravery and his patriotism that in doing 
so he has retained their confidence and devotion. It is 
a confidence which dates back to the 'sixties, when, 
after the Turks had ravaged the country with fire and 
sword, the young Prince set himself to organise his people 
afresh for war and peace, giving them not only a new 
miHtary system but also a rudimentary educational 
system. He has sought to suppress the blood feud that 
still prevails amongst his fierce people; but not with 
entire success, and murder is still the most familiar 
crime in that semi-barbaric land. He, indeed, in his 
earher days is alleged to have had a feud of his own 
which he carried through with terrible completeness. 

But if he held his people back against Austria in 
1909 he was their willing leader against the Turk in 
191 2. It was Montenegro that fired the first shot in 
the Balkan War, and Nicholas set out to what seemed 
like the last struggle with the foe of five centuries. 
" What a marching life is mine," he might have cried 
with Charlemagne. It is said that he hastened the war 



2o6 THE WAR LORDS 

in order to celebrate his birthday; but that is to do this 
wise old man of the mountains an injustice. He has 
never played the part of the irresponsible egoist. Even 
when at his Jubilee he succeeded in converting his 
Princedom into a Kingdom it was not vanity that in- 
spired him, as it had inspired Prince Ferdinand of 
Bulgaria. It was love of his little land. He would not 
have it subordinate to its neighbours. If Bulgaria was 
to be a Kingdom, Montenegro should be a Kingdom too. 
It was the Kingdom, not the Kingship, that he sought. 

But even the Balkan War was not the end of his 
marching Hfe. It was only the preliminary to the 
greatest struggle of all, the struggle in which at last 
the Serbian people were fighting for their unity against 
both their historic foes, not alone but with the support 
of every friend of freedom in Europe. When the war is 
over Nicholas will hang up his sword for the last time, 
and the days of the isolation of the httle people of the 
Black Mountain will be over. How after such centuries 
of fighting they will consort with the lamb of peace is 
hard to imagine. Perhaps, absorbed in a Serbian re- 
union, they will emerge into a larger Hfe. But not until 
the brave old King has taken his farewell. He is the 
last of the heroes of an ancient tradition. When he 
goes, modernism will come among the mountains. On 
some sunny day when peace reigns you may see the clash 
of the old and the new in his palace grounds. The old 
King rides forth, not on his donkey, but on his favourite 
horse, saluting famiharly with the ease of a perfect 
cavalier. He dashes across the park towards the tennis 
court where the young Princes Danilo and Mirko with 
the princesses are playing tennis in the midst of the 
Corps Diplomatique who mark and watch the game. 
The tough old conqueror of Mouktar and of Mahmoud- 
Pasha holds in small esteem this child's play, an impor- 



KING NICHOLAS OF MONTENEGRO 207 

tation from England, in which the man is often conquered 
by the woman. And perhaps with rough geniahty he 
makes a sudden swerve into the midst of the onlookers, 
puts his horse over the net and then at full speed dis- 
appears in the wild gorges of the mountains, while the 
players, famihar with these robust freaks of the giant, 
resume their interrupted game with laughter. 

The tennis player will succeed the old chieftain. 
Prince Danilo, with his motor-cars, his love for sport, 
his familiarity with half a dozen languages, his con- 
ventional foreign dress and his perfect manners, is 
centuries away from the old Montenegrin patriarch. 
He will take his place naturally among the other foreign 
and denationalised rulers of the Balkans. King Nicholas 
will end the tradition of the old Black Mountain princes, 
and will pass naturally into the realm of legend, where 
he will Hve for ever a brave and sagacious figure, the 
father of his people, sitting at his front door in the sun- 
shine, accessible to the humblest peasant, and with a 
single soldier as sentinel; deahng out justice under a 
tree, hke St. Louis; loving a good Slav ballad as much 
as plum brandy; making the songs of his people; 
giving them laws; leading them to victory. It is a 
figure on which history will dwell with affection — per- 
haps also with regret that the modern world has no 
place for the peasant King. 



THE CROWN PRINCE OF PRUSSIA 

The failure of the Crown Prince is among the few gratify- 
ing personal episodes of the war. It is gratifying because 
the more the House of HohenzoUern is discredited the 
more hope there will be of the liberation of Germany in 
the future from the evil influence that has made her the 
outlaw of the human race. It is gratifying also because 
the Crown Prince played a leading part in the military 
conspiracy that led to the war. His relations with his 
father had been notoriously bad. For a period long 
anterior to the tragedy he had openly allied himself with 
the military extremists, and there is a widespread and 
well-informed opinion that it was the fear of his son that 
was largely responsible for the marked change which 
was apparent in the attitude of the Kaiser in August 
191 3 — a change commented on in the memorable 
despatch of M. Jean Cambon, the French Ambassador 
in Berlin. The unpopularity of the Kaiser with the 
military party had long been a familiar topic in German 
society. It was believed that he would never be coerced 
into making the plunge, and he was openly accused of 
cowardice. In the Crown Prince was found an easy tool 
with which to bring the Kaiser to heel. The alliance 
of the heir-apparent with the war party became an open 
menace to the authority of the Kaiser. He saw his 
popularity with the dominant caste usurped by his son, 
and even his prestige with the people imperilled by the 
same challenge. 

That challenge became apparent not only to Germany 

but the whole world through the Crown Prince's defiant 

208 




The Crown Prince of Prussia 



THE CROWN PRINCE OF PRUSSIA 209 

action in connection with the notorious Zabern episode. 
That episode was the most flagrant example there had 
been of the mihtary tyranny under which the German 
civihan existed. For some fancied affront to a young 
heutenant on the part of certain youthful citizens, the 
military were allowed to run amok among the populace, 
to beat old men with the sword and imprison distin- 
guished citizens. The outrage was too much even for 
the servile spirit of the German people, long inured to 
the insolence of the German officer, and as the result 
of the scenes in the Reichstag the Kaiser, throwing over 
the Chancellor, pubHcly rebuked Colonel von Renter, 
who had been the head and front of the offending. But 
while he was making peace his son leapt into the quarrel 
on the other side and sent a telegram conveying his 
" Bravos " to the officer whom his father had sacrificed 
to the public indignation. 

This escapade was, next to the earlier Reichstag 
episode, quite the most significant incident in a career 
which had provided Germany with abundant gossip and 
speculation for half a dozen years. It was significant, 
first, because the Crown Prince was no longer a boy. He 
was a man of thirty-three. But it was significant chiefly 
because it defined more clearly than anything that had 
gone before his attitude on the relations of the civil 
and mihtary powers in Germany. When the Crown 
Prince wired his " Bravos " to the grotesque von Renter, 
rattUng his sword in the market-place of Zabern, he 
not only openly repudiated his father but proclaimed 
to Germany that the heir to the throne threw in his lot 
with the mailed fist against the people. 

This fact was much more important than "the enchant- 
ing smile " about which so much was said in the popular 
descriptions of the Crown Prince. He certainly had 
that. His bright, debonair carriage gave him an easy 

o 



210 THE WAR LORDS 

path to popular homage. The people liked this youthful 
figure, straight and slim, with the fair hair and blue 
eyes of the Saxon and the vivacious manner of one who 
was intoxicated with the wine of life. It was not difficult 
to believe the stories that were told of his good nature, 
of the " lifts " he gave to workmen in his motor-car, of 
his passion for his abundant children, of his enthusiasm 
for pretty faces, of his love of dancing and music-halls, 
of his wild night excursions from Danzig to Berlin to see 
some favourite of the stage, and all the rest of the small 
legends with which the industrious journalist appeals 
to the popular taste for gossip about the stars who dwell 
apart from our humble lives. A little penetration would 
have discovered that this youthful and dashing exuber- 
ance was only the glitter of a shallow and irresponsible 
character, whose career might very conceivably be a 
mere Rake's Progress. The air of high spirits, pleasant 
in the boy, became mere levity in the man, and on the 
two most recent of his official visits to this country — the 
latest, and surely the last, the coronation of King George 
— his bearing was the subject of comment. I recall 
especially his manner during the long ceremony in West- 
minster Abbey. It would have been excusable in a 
restless boy, but in a man of his age and position it gave 
the impression of an unschooled arrogance. But the 
Germans are accustomed to arrogance in their rulers, 
and it seems indisputable that the Crown Prince was 
popular in spite of his notorious frailties. 

It was this personal popularity which used to be 
offered as the explanation of the conflict between the 
Kaiser and his eldest son. When the Crown Prince 
and his wife were sent off on a tour in the East, it was 
said that the Kaiser wanted to get rid of a dangerous 
rival in the affections of the people of Berlin. " There 
is only one ruler," he told the citizens of Frankfurt in 



THE CROWN PRINCE OF PRUSSIA 211 

one of his bursts of splendid egoism, " and it is I." And 
he would certainly not tolerate a rival in his own house- 
hold. But we need not suspect the Kaiser of a petty 
jealousy in his treatment of the Crown Prince. It is 
exphcable on the ground of a family tradition. Kings 
rarely get on well with their eldest sons. The Hohen- 
zoUerns have not only dragooned their people: they 
have dragooned their children, from the time when old 
Frederick William clapped Frederick the Great in prison 
onwards. They have been martinets in their own family 
and the tyranny of the martinet usually leads to reprisals. 
It has done so in the present case. Until his son's 
marriage, the Kaiser held him in with the tightest of 
reins, and the lad, curbed and regarded then as rather 
suUen by comparison with his popular brother, Eitel 
Fritz, seemed to give little promise of trouble. But 
with his marriage to the daughter of the Duke of Meck- 
lenburg - Schwerin he took the bit in his teeth and 
bolted. The union made him at least as rich as his 
father, and with riches he asserted his independence of 
the paternal leading strings. 

Hence the six years' war between the two. In theory 
there is nothing more beautifully simple than the man- 
agement of children. Every experienced parent recalls 
those happy and innocent days when he planned out 
the future development of his offspring — thus and thus 
would he stimulate, advise, encourage them; thus and 
thus would they go; and then in due time his own 
failure would be cancelled and his ideal would live in 
the flesh. If he is wise he comes later to the philosophy 
of the sensible man who once said to me, " I have come 
to the conclusion that it is not possible to worry children 
into being what you want them to be, but that it is 
possible to preserve their affection — if you take trouble." 
It is a humble, disillusioned conclusion; but it is a wise 



212 THE WAR LORDS 

one. With all his accomplishments, however, the 
Kaiser is not a wise parent, and, never having been 
conspicuous for filial obedience himself, he naturally 
could not tolerate its absence in his own son. For we 
dislike nothing so much as the reflection of our own 
failings in those about us. The HohenzoUerns, in short, 
believe in discipline for everybody except themselves. 

Between the martinet father and the insubordinate 
son the feud was open and flagrant. The more the 
Kaiser punished the Crown Prince the more he was the 
same — impulsive, defiant, wayward. He was " exiled " 
with his regiment to Danzig; but exile did not suppress 
him. It was from Danzig that he went down to Berlin 
to make that amazing scene in the Reichstag which set 
all Europe talking. His behaviour was an outrage to 
the Chancellor, but it was still more an outrage to the 
Kaiser, for the Chancellor is the personal Minister of 
his sovereign, and the Crown Prince's open repudiation 
of the policy of Herr Bethmann-HoUweg in regard to 
Morocco was equivalent to slapping his father's face 
before the whole world. It was said that he was con- 
fined as a punishment on his return to Danzig; but, if 
so, the lesson was as futile as those that had gone before, 
for the " Bravos " to von Renter bore the same signifi- 
cance as the Reichstag episode. Whatever the original 
attitude of the Kaiser was to the incidents at Zabern, 
he had the good sense to make a scapegoat of the Chan- 
cellor when he saw that the Reichstag would stand no 
nonsense. In these circumstances his son's telegrams, 
though they anticipated his action, could have only one 
meaning. They were, if not an attack on his father, 
an attempt to dictate his policy for him. 

In considering the bearing of all these and similar 
incidents upon the character of the Crown Prince, it 
was difficult to say how far they represented the de- 



THE CROWN PRINCE OF PRUSSIA 213 

termination of a high-spirited young man to have that 
" place in the sun " which his father denied him, and 
how far they expressed his real sentiments. He might 
be simply kicking over the traces to remind his father 
that he could kick. On the other hand, it is to be ob- 
served that -n the Zabern affair he was kicking not only 
his father, but the pubhc, and that is a very unusual 
proceeding for heirs-apparent. It is customary for 
them to pose as the friends of the people. In this case 
the Crown Prince was deliberately anti-popular. That 
is, of course, the traditional attitude of the Hohen- 
zollerns. They have governed their people with the 
mailed fist, but when they have been wise they have not 
proclaimed the fact. Frederick the Great clothed it 
under a guise of good-natured tolerance. When he 
was lampooned in the public streets, he had the lam- 
poons placed in a more conspicuous position. " My 
people and I have an excellent understanding," he said. 
" They say what they like and I do what I like." The 
Kaiser has not the wit of his great ancestor; but he was 
learning something of his discretion. More than once 
he had trimmed his sails to the democratic breeze. He 
still proclaimed the divine right with his old Sinaitic 
authority, but there were evidences that in his heart 
he knew it was false and that there was no resting-place 
for a King except upon the sanction of his people. 
Again and again he bowed to the storm — over the 
Billow budget, over the famous Telegraph interview, 
over Zabern. In each case the action of the Reichstag 
as the mouthpiece of the people had been accepted as 
the sovereign authority of the State. The Kaiser, in 
a word, seemed to be coming down, cautiously, un- 
demonstratively, but irrevocably, from the old absolutist 
position. There was a noticeable decline during the 
years immediately preceding the war in those aggressive 



214 THE WAR LORDS 

hectorings that he had been accustomed to address to 
his people, and on one recent occasion he had even 
revealed to the world, through Dr, Hintze, an episode 
in which he appeared — mirabile dictu ! — as the defender 
of constitutional government. On the day of his acces- 
sion to the throne, he said, he found on his desk a 
letter written by his great-uncle, Frederick William IV., 
the first nominally constitutional ruler of Prussia, which 
that monarch had ordered to be handed to each of his 
successors immediately on his accession until its appeal 
had been complied with. The appeal was this : that the 
new occupant of the Throne should overthrow the 
Constitution before taking the accession oath. The 
Kaiser's father and grandfather had ignored the amaz- 
ing legacy and passed it on. The Kaiser did not pass 
it on. He burned the letter. He told Dr. Hintze that 
he saw the possibility that some day, a young King — 
perhaps his mind strayed to Danzig as he spoke — 
receiving this criminal incitement, might attempt to 
act upon it. " I felt as if I had a powder barrel in the 
house and could not rest until it was destroyed," he said. 
It is difficult to correlate this incident with the 
arrogant and despotic claims of the Kaiser; but we 
must not look for coherence in such a wayward and 
neurotic personality. He has his moments of illumina- 
tion and this was one of them. And with his later 
tendency to accommodate himself to democratic senti- 
ment he could hardly fail to be concerned about his 
heir who still dwelt in that fatal Elysium which most 
doomed monarchs have inhabited — that Elysium in 
which the temporary arrangements of men are supposed 
to have a divine and eternal sanction. The exit from 
that Elysium is usually a painful one. In the midst of 
the French Revolution, Catherine II. of Russia wrote 
to Marie Antoinette at the Tuileries a letter in which 



THE CROWN PRINCE OF PRUSSIA 215 

she said: " Kings ought to proceed in their career, 
undisturbed by the cries of the people, as the moon 
pursues her course unimpeded by the howHng of dogs." 
It was a brave sentiment. History soon made its com- 
ment on it in France, and the Kaiser, who has plenty 
of intelligence, feared that his rather foolish son might 
provoke the same comment in Germany. 

It was not supposed at the time that the Crown 
Prince's insolent conduct in the Reichstag in regard to 
Morocco was directed against England. There was, 
indeed, a popular idea in Germany that this erratic 
young man had too great an enthusiasm for this country. 
The fact was a little unintelligible — as unintelligible, let 
us say, as the late King Edward's love for Republican 
France — for England, with its free institutions and its 
non-militarism, represented everything which the Crown 
Prince might be supposed to detest. But the affections 
of kmgs like the affections of commoners are not governed 
by politics, and the Crown Prince was supposed to have 
been seduced by our games and our customs, our clothes 
and even by ourselves. A serious attack was made on 
him in a section of the German Press, on the ground that, 
during the winter sports in Switzerland, he had not 
merely worn English clothes — which he commonly did 
— and used English terms, but that he had systematically 
cut the society of Germans in order to spend his time 
with EngHsh and Americans. He denied this impeach- 
ment afterwards, but he was indisputably fond of English 
country houses and of Americans, and his enthusiasm 
for British games, from golf to hockey and football, was 
as characteristic of his leanings as the intrepidity he 
showed in India in hunting the elephant and the tiger — 
in regard to which he wrote and published a narrative 
— and the daring of his exploits in the air which he was 
the first royal prince to invade. Love for our games 



2i6 THE WAR LORDS 

and for the customs of our country houses, however, 
would have been a poor basis on which to build confi- 
dence in regard to so essentially shallow a personality. 
He liked our games and our clothes because that was 
the measure of his understanding of this country. But 
beneath that superficial sympathy he had the Hohen- 
zoUern dislike of our free institutions and the Hohen- 
zoUern contempt for any governmental system that did 
not rest ostentatiously on the sword. His alliance with 
the militarist faction was a great, perhaps the decisive, 
asset of the war party. They had now a pistol to put 
at the head of the Kaiser, and looking at the war in the 
light of the personal conflict, it is not unreasonable to 
see in it the defeat of the Kaiser and the triumph of 
his son. 

But whatever the relations of father and son in regard 
to the catastrophe may have been, they have equally 
suffered humiliation in the field. The one thing we 
know confidently about the Kaiser is, that he has been 
present at nearly every great check that has befallen 
his army, and it is very confidently held that it was his 
strategy which failed in the attempt to reach Calais last 
October, a failure which may ultimately be regarded 
as the most decisive event of the war. Nor, since the 
French centre gave way before him, has the Crown 
Prince won any distinction in the field. We must 
accept the scandals associated with his name, the plunder 
of chateaux and the domestic sensations, with caution. 
They may be true, for anything is possible with so trivial 
and light-minded a person, and the allegations of the 
Baroness de Baye as to his alleged depredations at her 
chateau at Champeaubert cannot be wholly dismissed. 
But the atmosphere of war is congenial to malicious 
inventions, and we are all rather too easily disposed at 
these times to believe anything which will add a deeper 



THE CROWN PRINCE OF PRUSSIA 217 

dye to the enemy. But, putting aside these things, it 
is quite clear that the Crown Prince has been in a mihtary 
sense entirely negligible. There was a moment, at the 
time of the battle of the Marne, when it seemed that he 
had the fate of Toul in his hands, but he failed, and since 
the retreat he has suffered complete eclipse. The long 
periods of silence in regard to him have been explained 
in various ways, sometimes by the specific statement 
that he was dead, sometimes by the allegation that his 
father had put him under arrest, and so on. That there 
have been sharp conflicts between the two would seem 
to be undoubted, and there is very detailed evidence 
that he was responsible for the heavy sacrifice in the 
capture of Longwy — a sacrifice which enraged the Kaiser 
and is said to have led to a painful scene between him 
and the general in command, who defended himself by 
declaring that " if my soldiers advanced in close forma- 
tion against Longwy and were uselessly massacred it 
was by the orders of your son who, at the safe distance 
of 20 kilometres, kept on sending me the telephonic 
order, ' To the assault, always to the assault.' " 

We get an authentic glimpse of him in Sven Hedin's 
preposterous book. The glimpse is all the more de- 
lightful because the author, inspired by the spirit of 
flunkeyism, is unconscious of the absurdity of the 
scene he describes: 

" In the lower hall stood a number of officers in line, and opposite 
them some 20 soldiers formed up in the same way. Then came the 
Crown Prince WilUam, tall, slim, and royally straight, dressed in a 
dazzling white tunic and wearing the Iron Cross of the first and second 
class; he walked with a firm step between the fines of soldiers. An 
adjutant followed him, carrying in a casket a number of Iron Crosses. 
The Crown Prince took one and handed it to the nearest officer. . . . 
Last night the Crown Prince distributed more Iron Crosses among the 
heroes of the day. 

" Would you like to know what the German Crown Prince, the 



2i8 THE WAR LORDS 

Crown Prince of Prussia, eats for supper ? Here is the menu— cabbage 
soup, boiled beef with horse-radish and potatoes, wild duck with salad, 
fruit, wine, and coffee with cigars." 

There is the famous explorer's picture of his hero, 
painted in all seriousness and with the reverence of the 
honest flunkey. It is an exquisite scene — the " royally 
straight " young man, with his dazzHng white tunic 
and his royally firm step, handing out iron crosses right 
and left from a box, and then partaking of his beef and 
greens just as though he were a mere mortal. One sees 
the honest flunkey gazing at the subHme spectacle with 
a sort of speechless admiration. And later he heard 
the royally straight young man talk of the war, and this 
is an example of the wisdom that fell from his royal 
Hps : " Of the fighting men one sees practically nothing, 
for they are concealed by the ground and in the trenches, 
and it is rather dangerous to get too close to a bayonet 
charge — unless one's duty takes one there." One does 
not know whether to wonder most at the naivete of the 
Crown Prince or that of the infatuated gentleman who 
solemnly records these flatulent nothings. But they 
serve one purpose. They reveal the Crown Prince to 
us. And the revelation reminds one of Charles II.'s 
remark about Prince George : " I've tried him drunk 
and I've tried him sober, and there's nothing in him 
either way." 



KING FERDINAND 

In those brilliant days of last July when Berlin and 
Vienna were making their calculations for the great 
adventure it is certain that Bulgaria played a large part 
in them. It was only a pawn in the game, but it was 
a pawn in a very critical position, and upon its opera- 
tions would depend the course of events in one of the 
capital areas of the coming war. It might even turn 
the scale in the m.ajor theatre of that war. 

In normal circumstances it would not have seemed 
possible for the Kaiser to have calculated on anything 
but the decisive hostility of the Bulgarian people. He 
had " put his money " — to use the phrase made famous 
by Lord Salisbury in the same connection — on Turkey, 
the historic enemy of Bulgaria. And his diplomacy, 
even as long ago as 1898, had begun to assume the 
patronage of the Moslem world. It was in his speech 
at Damascus in that year that he said : " The three 
hundred million Mohammedans who live scattered over 
the globe may be assured of this, that the German 
Emperor will be their friend at all times." The world 
laughed at the mingled insolence and vanity of the re- 
mark, but it was, in fact, an audacious declaration of 
world poHcy, as the Kruger telegram had been before it. 
He sent his greatest statesman. Baron Marschall von 
Bieberstein, to build up German influence at the Porte, 
and even on the morrow of the Armenian massacres, 
when the streets of Constantinople were stiU red with 
Christian blood, he had shocked the world by sending 
a message of flattering patronage to Abdul Hamid. It 

was probably owing to his influence that the Germans 

219 



220 THE WAR LORDS 

were the only Christian people in Constantinople who, 
during the massacre in that city, refused to shelter the 
Armenians. Even the revolution and the advent of the 
Young Turks did not affect his policy. He transferred his 
affections to the new rulers and made a tool of the ambi- 
tious Enver Pasha, and the inertness of our own repre- 
sentation at Constantinople left his policy unobstructed. 
In all the collateral circumstances which led to the great 
tragedy there were few more regrettable than the failure 
of this country to maintain the friendship of the Young 
Turk movement. In that movement, as in most, there 
were conflicting motives, but at the beginning I believe 
the main motive was a genuine Liberal enthusiasm. 

That was certainly the impression at the historic 
dinner at the Hotel Cecil when representatives of all 
the English parties entertained the representatives of 
the new Ottoman Parliament. We felt that a better 
day had dawned at last in the Balkans and that Turkish 
misrule was at an end. But that hope died out. The 
Young Turk, cold-shouldered by our Embassy, fell under 
the influence of Germany, and the result revealed itself 
in the triumph of the evil elements of the movement, 
and the revival of the Turkifying policy of the past and 
the suppression of all the Liberal ideas with which the 
revolution began. The cry of tortured Macedonia rose 
from under the harrow of the New Turk as it had risen 
from under that of the old Turk. Three years later, 
the Balkan League, which had been a dream, became 
a reality with Bulgaria as its spearhead, and in a swift 
campaign the Turk was decisively and it seemed finally 
beaten. Constantinople itself would perhaps have fallen 
to the Bulgarians but for the opposition of Russia, which 
had no wish to see the city on the Bosphorus the capital 
of a great Balkan confederation. 

This, as we can see to-day, was the turning-point of 



KING FERDINAND 221 

much more than the fate of the Balkans. The Great 
Powers, looking on at the Balkan struggle with their 
hands upon their swords, watched events with very 
diverse sympathies. Hitherto those events had gone 
against Germany, Turkey, her protege, whose officers 
she had trained and whose guns she had made, had been 
shattered, and the Balkan Powers, united for the first 
time in history, were triumphant. All her diplomacy 
at Constantinople had been in vain, her path to Salonika 
and Asia Minor seemed finally cut off, and in any coming 
struggle she would have to reckon on the hostility of 
South-Eastern Europe. It is probable that this moment 
was the gloomiest experience the Kaiser had had in the 
development of his far-reaching game. 

But it was at this moment that the current turned 
in his favour, and the man who had most influence in 
turning it was probably King Ferdinand. Not the 
least of the advantages with which the Kaiser began 
the war were the sympathies of those who occupied the 
thrones of the outlying and secondary powers. Ger- 
many, with its prolific growth of royal houses, has always 
done a large export trade in royalties. Whenever a 
throne was vacant or a new throne was established, it 
was to Germany that the people in search of a king 
naturally went to market, and it was not often that they 
failed to find the article they required. The result has 
been profitable to the Kaiser. The bread cast upon the 
waters has come back in many days, " and buttered tu, 
for sartin," as Mr. Biglow would say. North and south 
there was the same phenomenon — the royal house in 
sympathy with Germany, the people in sympathy with 
the Allies. It is a fact which deserves to be carefully 
remembered by the democracy in all countries, for it has 
an important bearing on the part which the monarchical 
idea plays in the affairs of nations. In Greece the king 



222 THE WAR LORDS 

has the Kaiser's sister for his wife; in Roumania the 
throne is occupied by a HohenzoUern ; in Sweden the 
king is connected with Germany by marriage; in Bul- 
garia the king is a Coburg-Orleanist, And no one, 
surveying the history of the war, can doubt how power- 
ful has been that Germanic influence in the palaces in 
checking the popular sympathies of these countries. 

But it is Ferdinand whose influence on events has been 
most subtle and most powerful. And as a preliminary 
to understanding why Bulgaria — ^which owes its freedom 
to Russia, which for centuries has been engaged in a 
fierce struggle with the Turk, which reverences the name 
of Gladstone more than that of any statesman, and which 
has always looked to England as its political champion — 
is in this supreme crisis found preserving a morose 
aloofness from the cause of the Allies, it is necessary to 
understand King Ferdinand. 

In a house in Sofia, I have been told, there is a dead 
hand, preserved not as a relic but as a reminder. The 
house is the old home of the murdered Stambuloff, the 
hand is the hand of that rough-hewn patriot himself. 
One day the hand is to be buried. The day will be that 
on which Stambuloff's murder is avenged. It is an 
uncomfortable reflection for King Ferdinand. 

And yet to Hve under the shadow of a dead hand seems 
the perfectly fitting destiny of Ferdinand, for he is the 
king of melodrama. Those people who suppose that 
melodrama is not true to life have not studied his story 
or his character. Both are transpontine. He is the 
very stuff of which the dreams of the playwright and 
the romancist are compact. There are times indeed 
when you almost doubt whether he was not invented by 
Dumas or Stevenson or Anthony Hope: you seem to 
see the movement of the wires and the face of the author 
between the wings enjoying the success of his triumphant 



KING FERDINAND 223 

creation. When the curtain goes down the author will 
surely appear and thank you for your kind reception of 
the child of his invention. 

As a matter of fact King Ferdinand was invented by 
his mother. It used to be said that Princess Clementine 
was the cleverest woman in Europe. This only meant 
that she was a very skilful and ambitious intriguer. The 
daughter of King Louis Philippe and the widow of 
Prince Augustus of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, she felt that 
her youngest and favourite child had a special claim 
upon Providence. She resolved that he should be a 
king by hook or by crook. Moreover, she had the 
assurance of a gipsy that he was destined Hke Macbeth 
for a throne, and Princess Clementine was not a person 
to bandy words with a gipsy. She took the practical 
course, and prepared her son, from the cradle, for the 
career marked out for him. He was whisked from 
capital to capital, habituated to the company of princes, 
indoctrinated with the diplomatic subtleties of " The 
Prince," taught the facile graces of the charmeur, made 
to cultivate entomology as one of those hobbies that sit 
so prettily on potentates, coached in half a dozen lan- 
guages, even in Hungarian, for one never knew from 
whence the call to kingship would come. Thrones 
might spring up or fall vacant anywhere. One must 
be ready to pounce. It is a beautiful idyll of maternal 
love — a modern inversion of the legend O' the Roman 
matron who sacrificed her children to the State. 

The moment came. One day some twenty-seven 
years ago, there sat in a Viennese beer garden a group 
of Bulgarian statesmen. They were returning empty- 
handed from their quest for a prince. They had a 
throne to offer, but had found no one hungry enough 
to take it. Nor was the reluctance of the European 
princelings surprising. Ten years had passed since 



224 THE WAR LORDS 

Bulgaria had won its freedom after five centuries of 
Turkish misrule. But it had only escaped from the 
tyranny of the Turk to fall under the shadow of Russia. 
The Tsar meant it to be the pawn in his own Balkan 
game. Poor Prince Alexander of Battenburg — brave, 
courageous, and beloved by the simple Bulgarian 
peasantry — had been dethroned, and any one who 
ventured to follow him had to face the menace of Russia. 
And without Russia none of the Powers would give him 
countenance. In this emergency one man stood like 
a rock between Bulgaria and the Russian. It was 
Stambuloff, the innkeeper's son. Rude and violent, 
a man who combined a sincere patriotism with uncouth 
manners and a genius for statesmanship, he had been 
largely responsible for throwing off the yoke of Turkey, 
and now fought with equal passion to resist Russian 
aggression. It was he who had sent out the com- 
mission to find a prince — the commission that now sat 
forlorn and unsuccessful in the Viennese beer garden. 
Enter Major Laabe. He learned their business— knew 
their business, indeed, for was he not the advance agent 
of the Prince-in-search-of-a-throne ? " Why, gentlemen, 
there is just the man you want," said he, pointing to a 
young officer in the white tunic and gold-laced kepi 
of Austrian Hussars who was sitting near by — how 
accidentally one can only guess. " He is Ferdinand of 
Saxe - Coburg - Gotha, grandson of Louis Philippe, a 
cousin of every crowned head in Europe, a favourite 
of the Emperor of Austria and the Tsar, and a man of 
wealth." 

It is a delightful story and it may be true. In any 
case, the boat that a year before had brought the 
dethroned Alexander up the Danube took Ferdinand 
down. No prince ever entered upon a more precarious 
enterprise than his. Unrecognised by the Powers with- 




-i. .w-iii t*r^^^t^t^^-9'*4js.'<MWir*>'^''»^m'»'^t^ 



Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria 



KING FERDINAND 225 

out, faced by a masterful minister within, he seemed the 
princeling of an hour — a momentary incident in Bul- 
garia's troubled story. And yet at the end of twenty- 
five years his throne was secure, his country stable and 
prosperous, he was smiled on by the Powers, his prince- 
ship had become a kingship, he stood at the head of a 
triumphant army with the Turk under foot, and it 
seemed that he might emerge from the war the Emperor 
of the Balkans as the King of Prussia emerged from the 
war of 1870 the Emperor of the Germans. It was the 
triumph of a subtle diplomacy, motived by one dominat- 
ing passion — personal ambition. There were some who, 
in their enthusiasm for Bulgaria, found in Ferdinand the 
chivalrous hero who had wrought the miracle. The 
success of his policy prejudiced their judgment of the 
man. 

But if we are to understand Ferdinand we must 
distinguish between public results and private motives. 
It may be that no other instrument could have accom- 
plished what this purely artificial monarch had accom- 
plished for Bulgaria. The determination to " arrive " 
himself had enabled Bulgaria to arrive also. Between 
him and his people there is an immeasurable gulf fixed. 
A solid, somewhat dour, but very virile race, the 
Bulgarians have no point of contact in temperament or 
sympathies with their sovereign. He has had to con- 
quer them, as he had to conquer the Powers and Stam- 
buloff. They, a simple, undemonstrative people, were 
revolted by the vanity of their prince. While his 
neighbour, Nicholas of Montenegro, sat at his door and 
was accessible to any peasant, Ferdinand assumed the 
pose and habits of the grand monarque. Within a few 
days of his arrival he had refused to see the representa- 
tives of England, Austria, and Italy because they did 

not appear in the presence in uniform. No king in 

p 



226 THE WAR LORDS 

Europe is hedged round with more pomp and ceremony 
than Ferdinand, travels in more regal style, assumes 
a more Olympian air, cultivates so extravagant an 
etiquette. Even his little son cannot ride abroad without 
a cavalcade and an ecclesiastical dignitary in attendance. 
His relative, the Comtesse de Paris, once said of him that 
he cared for nothing except titles and orders, and the 
industry with which for years he canvassed the Courts 
of Europe for a crown gives colour to the saying. 

But vain though he is, his ambition soars beyond 
titles. His aims are im_perial, but he will stoop low to 
conquer. Neither his faith, nor his dignity, nor loyalty 
to those who have served him are allowed to stand in 
the way of his march to power. When he found that 
Russia remained obdurate, even though Stambuloff 
had been removed, he bartered his faith and his word to 
win her smiles. He himself is a Roman Catholic, and 
when he married his first wife. Princess Marie Louise of 
Parma, he agreed that their children should be brought 
up in the faith of Rome. But when all else had failed 
to placate Russia, he had his son Boris " converted " to 
the Orthodox Church, in spite of the scorn of the world 
and the flight of his wife with her younger son to escape 
the outrage to her faith. " The West has pronounced 
its anathema against me," he said, but he had won his 
prize. Russia smiled on him, recognised him, and with 
that recognition came the countenance of all the Great 
Powers. The path to glory was at last clear. 

But it was in the Stambuloff episode that his character 
was most startlingly revealed. It is a dark story. 
History could not show a more dramatic contrast of 
personalities than that provided by Ferdinand and the 
Minister who made him prince — the one all artifice, the 
other all primitive nature. Stambuloff was a ruthless 
man set in ruthless circumstances. He had one passion 



KING FERDINAND 227 

— love of his country. To that passion he sacrificed 
everything and everybody — most of all he sacrificed 
himself. Turkey had been driven out of his vineyard; 
but the agents of Russia were overrunning it. He was 
alone in the midst of a web of plots and intrigues and he 
fought like a giant, mercilessly, cunningly. Meanwhile 
he was consolidating the country, constructing railways, 
developing its resources, giving it education, building 
up its army, laying the foundations of that power that 
was to win the respect of the world later. To him Fer- 
dinand was only a necessary instrument in his scheme 
to defeat the machinations of Russia and to establish 
the freedom of his land. And he found him, instead, 
anxious only to be approved by Russia and the Powers. 
The liberty of Ferdinand's kingdom was threatened; 
his very life was in daily peril; he lived on the brink of 
a volcano, and yet his dreams were the dreams of pomp 
and vanity. 

Two such men could not run permanently in harness. 
One may sympathise with the prince, for Stambuloff 
was " gey ill to live wi'." He had no reverence for 
princes and a mighty scorn for the shows of things. He 
was fighting a tremendous battle and was apt to forget 
his manners. " I cannot and will not be seen with you 
if you don't take that frippery off," he is said to have 
exclaimed when, his mind full of fierce actualities, he 
found himself in the presence of his prince, who was 
clothed in a wonderful coronation mantle of purple and 
ermine. " Some people will think you are mad. There 
are more urgent matters to be attended to than corona- 
tion mantles. For instance, your Highness might see 
that you get a more trustworthy bodyguard, or else " 

An uncomfortable master — a master who would 
neither flatter him nor betray him. For Russia intimated 
that she would be Bulgaria's friend if only Stambuloff 



228 THE WAR LORDS 

would surrender this usurper — if only Ferdinand could 
be sent the way of Alexander. But Stambuloff knew 
that to surrender the prince was to surrender Bulgaria. 
It was not the man he cared for, but the nationality of 
which he had become the symbol. 

But if the minister would not betray the prince, the 
prince could desert the minister. One day, during his 
absence abroad, Ferdinand wrote an official letter for- 
bidding Stambuloff to report to him, and declaring that 
his conduct was " infame." Stambuloff resigned in a 
letter in which he said, " cela ne fait honneur ni au 
peuple bulgare, ni ^ son Prince, si I'activite d'un ministre 
bulgare doit etre caracterisee par I'adjectif * infame.' " 

Ferdinand was free. " Henceforth," he said, " I 
mean to rule as well as to reign." He has kept his 
word, But while Stambuloff lived the shadow of that 
terrible man hung over his path. It was said that he 
was to be brought to trial. It would have been well if 
he had been. There were plenty of crimes against him, 
for he had dipped his hands deep in the blood of those 
enemies whom he believed to be the enemies of his 
country. But he was not tried. Instead, his house 
was surrounded by spies; his steps were dogged wher- 
ever he went. He appealed to be allowed to go to 
Karlsbad for his health, but the request was refused by 
the Government. He then declared publicly that he 
was being kept in Sofia to be murdered. On the 15 th 
July, 1895, in the streets of Sofia, with the police looking 
on, he was brutally butchered — not merely murdered but 
mutilated. Prince Ferdinand, who had gone to Karls- 
bad, telegraphed his grief to the widow and ordered 
his highest Court official to tender his condolences to 
her personally. The telegram was unanswered; the 
official was refused admission. Europe rang with the 
murder. Petkoff, who narrowly escaped death with his 



KING FERDINAND 229 

friend, denounced the Prince ; the Svoboda openly 
accused him and his Ministers of instigating the murder; 
the Vossische Zeitung said that " if any ordinary 
citizen of any State had been so incriminated as Prince 
Ferdinand had been, the man would have been arrested." 
No one was arrested; no one was punished. 

It will be seen that those who dismiss King Ferdinand 
as a mere scented popinjay are mistaken. To have 
come a stranger into a land seething with rebellion — a 
land where he was to have been a prince in name and a 
mere instrument of policy in fact — to have matched 
himself against the Bulgarian Bismarck and over- 
thrown him, to have won his crown and made himself 
" a King indeed," as despotic as any King in Europe, 
to stand at the end of twenty-five years at the head of 
an army that had astonished the world and at the head 
of a League that confronted Europe with a new political 
fact of the first magnitude — all this implies more than 
the vanity and the febrile futility with which his enemies 
credit him. He is " the artful Augustus " of a later 
Gibbon, a Napoleon the Third with more than Napoleon's 
calculation and statesmanship. " I am the rock against 
which the waves beat in vain," he said grandiloquently 
long ago — and his courtiers laughed. He is not that. 
But he is the supple artificer of greatness, innocent of 
scruple, swift to take fortune at the flood, one who 
" makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up," and 
has that wonderful instinct of self-preservation which 
enables him in all emergencies to fall lightly upon his 
feet. He applies the arts of the mediaeval prince to 
Twentieth-Century conditions and Machiavelli himself 
would have little to teach him. 

Now it would be unfair to suggest that all the responsi- 
bility for the course of events that left Bulgaria outside 
the orbit of the AlHes, when the European war began, 



230 THE WAR LORDS 

rested on King Ferdinand. It was shared by others, 
by Serbia, by Russia to some extent, by the Bulgarian 
people themselves, certainly by M. Daneff, who, always 
with Bismarck and his methods in mind, aimed at a 
Bulgarian dominion in the Balkans. Indeed if we 
penetrate to the ultimate sources of things. Great 
Britain is perhaps as responsible as any. For it is not 
mere ingenuity that sees in the war that is devastating 
Europe to-day the outcome of the Berlin Treaty with 
which Disraeli wrought the wrong and dazzled his 
countrymen. With that sympathy for the Turk which 
is universally characteristic of the Jew, he became his 
saviour in Europe, destroyed the Treaty of San Stefano, 
and handed Macedonia back to be ground under his 
heel. Bismarck, watching events with his grim humour, 
saw that all was well. He was not going to be involved 
in the quarrel with Russia, for friendship with Russia 
was the unchanging key of his policy, and he declared 
that the Balkans were " not worth the bones of a single 
Pomeranian grenadier." But if he was not going to 
get into trouble with Russia himself he was quite happy 
to see Russia in trouble with others, and when Austria, 
anxious to protect her own interests in the Balkans, 
wanted to intervene in the war he astutely opposed the 
idea. He was right. A new abscess was formed in the 
Balkans. The war of 1877 — or rather the crime that 
followed the war — was the seed of the Balkan war of 
191 2, and the wars of 191 2-1 3 begot in large measure 
the Euiopean war of to-day. 

But if many shoulders share the responsibility for 
the detachment of Bulgaria from its natural alliance 
with the Allies to-day, the main personal responsibility 
rests on King Ferdinand. He had risen from a wander- 
ing princeling to a monarch. He had in 191 2 emerged 
from one of the most successful wars in history, and his 



KING FERDINAND 231 

dream of a Balkan Empire, with himself as the Tsar of 
the Empire, seemed within reach. The genius of Veni- 
zelos had given reality and statesmanship to the Bal- 
kanic federation : Ferdinand would convert that federa- 
tion into a dominion under his own sway. In pursuing 
this entirely personal aim he appealed unfortunately to 
the sentiment of his people. They are in many respects 
one of the most reputable peoples in Europe — honest, 
industrious, capable. But their success since they had 
thrown off the yoke of the Turk had filled them with 
ambitions. They believed themselves to be the master 
people of the Balkans and their leaders had cultivated 
the dream of a four-seas hegemony, a Bulgarian do- 
minion extending to the shores of the Black Sea, the 
Sea of Marmora, the ^Egean, and the Adriatic. 

It was unfortunate that at the crisis of the war with 
Turkey, when the Balkan League was in peril, Bulgaria 
was represented at the conference in London and sub- 
sequently by M. Daneff rather than by the statesman- 
like M. Gueshoff, as M. Venizelos understood would be 
the case. Why the change was made I do not know, 
but it had fatal consequences. M. Daneff is of the 
Prussian type of diplomatist. He believes in " hacking 
his way through," and though M. Venizelos risked his 
popularity in Greece by the concessions he was prepared 
to make, he could come to no terms with his blunt 
opponent, who insisted on having Salonika as well as 
Macedonia as his share of the Turkish plunder. And 
unhappily Serbia, under the mischievous influence of 
M. Hartwig, the Russian minister, and the still more 
mischievous action of Austria which refused to her any 
access to the Adriatic, was equally intractable. She tore 
up the agreement as to the distribution of territory which 
she had made with Bulgaria before the Turkish war, and 
set up claims to Southern Macedonia, claims which were 



232 THE WAR LORDS 

a direct breach of the Balkan treaty of 191 2. She fell, 1 

in fact, into the trap which Austria had prepared for the 
hated Balkan Federation. That Federation must be 
broken up if the ambitions of Germany and Austria in 
South Eastern Europe were to be fulfilled and a quarrel 
between the Balkan States was the obvious means of 
breaking it up. By refusing Serbia an outlet to the 
sea in the West, Austria turned her for compensation in 
the direction of Bulgaria, and by that cunning stroke 
shattered the Federation and restored the old condition 
of hostility between the Balkan States. 

But the disaster would have been avoided if King 
Ferdinand had worked loyally with Venizelos. He, 
however, seized the opportunity Serbia had given him 
to launch out on the conquest of the Balkans. That 
he authorised the attack which led to the final dissolution 
of the Balkan League and to the outbreak of the second 
Balkan war is a fact which is well known in diplomatic 
circles. It is proved collaterally by the strange episode 
of the prosecution after the war of General Savoff for 
corruption. That prosecution was suddenly dropped, 
and the only reason that exists for that unexplained fact 
is the allegation that Savoff threatened, unless the pro- 
ceedings were stopped, to publish the order from King 
Ferdinand authorising the attack on Serbia. 

Ambition never suffered a more disastrous fall. The 
Bulgarian armies, instead of marching triumphantly to 
Salonika and Nish, were overwhelmingly defeated by 
the Greeks and the Serbians, and in the subsequent 
conference at Bucharest Bulgaria saw her trophies from 
the war with Turkey reduced to the barest minimum. 
So far from having Salonika she was denied Kavala, which 
Venizelos had offered her as the price of the main- 
tenance of the League. But her greatest humiliation 
was the loss of Southern Macedonia. Her claim to this 



KING FERDINAND 233 

region was not merely founded in ambition and in the 
Balkan Treaty of February 191 2, but sprang justly from 
the principle of nationality. For though the population 
of the Monastir vilayet is very mixed it is predominantly 
Bulgarian both in race and sympathy. The crime of 
King Ferdinand and his ministers had been punished 
by a sentence which all the world admitted to be unjust 
and a violation of those rights of nationality which are 
never outraged without disaster. Bulgaria retired from 
the Bucharest conference beaten, humiliated, and full 
of bitterness and thoughts of revenge. And when the 
European war came she stood aloof from the struggle, 
the centre of the discontent in the Balkans and the one 
obstacle to a decisive movement in favour of the Allies. 
Had the Balkan League survived, had the Treaty of 
London been insisted on by the Powers, had even the 
Treaty of Bucharest been a just settlement of the claims 
of the rivals there would have been an irresistible 
movement against Germany in the Balkans last August. 
Turkey would never have ventured to enter the struggle, 
and the popular sentiment of Greece, Bulgaria, and 
Roumania would have triumphed over the Germanic 
sympathies of the courts and brought those countries 
into the field with Serbia, under the inspiration of 
Balkan unity and freedom. 

But Bulgaria would not move, and without Bulgaria 
none would move, for Roumania and Greece believed 
that if things went wrong Bulgaria would seize her 
moment for vengeance. And so the three powers stood 
watching the struggle, watching each other, watching 
their old enemy Turkey plunge into the fight, watching 
their old ally Serbia being bled white for freedom. 
Venizelos made a brave effort to restore the League and 
bring it to the help of the Allies, but the King of Greece 
brought his scheme to ruin and with his failure the Kaiser 



234 THE WAR LORDS 

had won in this critical field of the war. He had won 
because he had captured the active help of Turkey without 
incurring the active hostility of Turkey's historic enemies. 
He had had many helpers in escaping from the dark 
moment of 191 2 when a united Balkans had overthrown 
the Turk and barred the German advance to the South- 
East, Russia's fear of a great Balkan Federation had 
helped him. Her check to Bulgaria when her armies 
were marching on Constantinople had helped him. The 
failure of the Alhes to see that their supreme interest 
was to rebuild and maintain the Balkan League at all 
costs had helped him. The wrong done to Bulgaria by 
Greece, Serbia, and Roumania in the settlement of 
Bucharest had helped him. But it was the ambition 
of King Ferdinand that had helped him most. On the 
day that the monarch issued his order to Savoff to attack 
the Allies who had aided him to overthrow Turkey, he 
brought ruin to the Balkans and disaster to himself; 
but he brought joy to the heart of the Kaiser. He had 
achieved Balkan disunion, which was the hope of the 
Kaiser in the coming struggle, in place of Balkan unity, 
which, though unhappily they did not realise it, was the 
interest of the Allies. 



GENERAL VON BERNHARDT 

AND THE SPIRIT OF GERMANY 

Paris has many tragic memories, but it has no memory- 
graven so deep as that of the morning of March i, 1871. 
Famine had brought the city to surrender and the great 
siege was over. The terms of capitulation had been 
settled, and on this March morning, whose brightness 
was so out of key with the sadness that reigned through- 
out the fallen city, the Prussians were to enter as victors. 
It was a quarter to nine when, looking down the Avenue 
de la Grande Armee, the gloomy citizens assembled near 
the Arc de Triomphe — what a name for such a day! — 
saw the approach of the first outriders of the com.ing 
host. There were six or seven of them, and they were 
led by a big man on a brown horse, a lieutenant of the 
2nd Hessian Hussars. He was the first specimen of the 
triumphant foe on whom the Parisians had set eyes, and 
they watched his advance with an interest that was none 
the less intense because it was charged with such bitter 
thoughts. Had they been able to read the future they 
would have watched him stiU more closely, for long after 
they were to hear of him again. 

The young lieutenant reached the Arc de Triomphe, 
which was hidden by sandbags. What followed I give 
in the words of an Englishman who had been in Paris 
during the siege and had come out to witness the final 
scene of the great tragedy. " My Uhlan gives a look 
about, gazes up at the Triumphal Arch, trots his steed 
around it, as if looking for the way under it, and appar- 

235 



236 THE WAR LORDS 

ently not clear how he is to pass beneath the grand arch, 
turns his horse's head and gallops back to his friends. 
The group presses forward and at the Arc de Triomphe 
the same manoeuvre is repeated. Their disappointment 
at being baulked of their desire to pass under it like 
conquering heroes is too manifest not to be noticeable; 
but, putting the best face (a somewhat wry one) upon 
a clear case of non possumus, they gallop off, full tear, 
down the Avenue des Champs Elysees, and soon dis- 
appear." 

That scene at the Arc de Triomphe has been described 
by the chief actor himself. " We advanced," he wrote, 
" at full gallop through the long empty avenue as far 
as the Arc de Triomphe. Here a dense mass of men 
rushed up at me and I was thinking I should have to 
make use of arms when I heard the well-known guttural 
sounds of the sons of Albion. ' What's your name ? ' 
' What regiment ? ' etc. They were all of them newspaper 
correspondents." The reference to " guttural sounds " 
is delicious from a German; but the interesting fact 
is the omission of any allusion to the disappointment at 
finding no way of entering Paris under the great arch. 
It was a small thing, but it m.eant much to the military 
mind. If the superstitious saw in it an omen they are 
not without evidence of fulfilment. That check to the 
Prussian at the gates of Paris was one day to be repeated 
on a scale to which history offers no parallel. 

Forty-four years passed by and the young lieutenant, 
young no longer, was once more in the centre of the 
world stage, his name on every lip, himself the sinister 
embodiment of the menace of Prussia as on that March 
morning he had been the embodiment of its triumph. 
In the interval he had become a general, a dis- 
tinguished cavalry leader of the German army. But 
his fame, so far as the military world was concerned, 



GENERAL VON BERNHARDI 237 

rested on his writings. He was the most illustrious of 
the host of authors who poured out the vast literature 
of war in Germany, the significance of which the world 
was so slow to realise. Some of his books had been 
translated into English, and it is interesting to recall 
to-day that one of them, Cavalry in Future JVars, had 
an introduction of warm approval from the pen of the 
most distinguished cavalry leader of the British Army, 
Sir John French. But the writer was still unknown, 
to the English people who are normally as indifferent 
to the literature of war as to the hterature of the 
Scarabee. 

The war came Hke a bolt from the blue, and then one 
morning, while the world was still reeling under the blow, 
there appeared on the bookstalls an orange-coloured 
book with the German eagle silhouetted on the cover. 
Its title was Germany and the Next War (" Deutschland 
und der Nachste Krieg "). There has, I suppose, in aU 
the history of books been nothing comparable to this 
apparition. In its ordinary form it had appeared two 
or three years before, been reviewed in the newspapers 
as an illustration of the mind of the German militarist 
school, and forgotten. But now it burst on the country 
like a shell and lit up the darkness Hke a tongue of flame. 
By the light of its astonishing candour the nation saw 
in one swift flash the meaning of the calamity into which 
the world had been plunged, understood what forces 
had triumphed in Germany, reaHsed that the issue of the 
war was whether the world was to live under the rule 
of Krupps or the laws of freedom. The publication of 
the book will always be a capital illustration of the 
strange mentality of Prussia which has so baflled the 
world. It is not difficult to understand the type of mind 
that thinks as Bernhardi thinks. The militarist mind 
is the same everywhere and always thinks in the terms 



238 THE WAR LORDS 

of Force. But it is hard to understand the mental condi- 
tion of the man who, thinking as Bernhardi thought, sits 
down to tell all his thoughts to the world. It is as if, in 
a spirit of intellectual abstraction, the polite burglar, 
meeting his intended victim, explains the crime he 
proposes to commit, how he intends to carry it out, 
and what he will do with the plunder. It is not that 
he wishes his victim to know; but that in his enthusiasm 
for his theories he forgets that his victim has ears and 
understanding. Indeed he forgets his victim altogether. 
He is a man talking aloud to himself He reminds one 
of that story of Coleridge who, taking Lamb by the 
button of his coat, began talking to him in the garden at 
Highgate. Lamb saw no way of escape except to cut 
off the button. This he did, leaving Coleridge talking 
to the Empyrean. Returning in the afternoon he looked 
over the hedge. There was Coleridge, the button 
between his fingers, still addressing the universe. 

It is this philosophic detachment, coupled with an 
entire lack of the humour and imagination which enable 
you to "put yourself in his place " and to see the other 
man's point of view, which has puzzled the English 
mind in the conduct of Germany. It is as though we 
are in conflict with a people who live on another plane, 
move in another realm of morals, and are unconscious 
of the public opinion of the world. As an illustration 
of the lack of humour, what could be more illuminating 
than the spectacle of a nation screaming Lissauer's 
" Hymn of Hate " and adopting as its battle-cry the 
infantile " Gott strafe England." If we will try to 
conceive ourselves decorating our toys with " God 
punish Germany," and greeting each other solemnly in 
the morning with the same sentiment we shall have some 
appreciation of the mental condition of Germany and 
its lack of a sane and clarifying humour. And the 



GENERAL VON BERNHARDI 239 

deficiency of imagination, of the understanding of the 
effect of things upon other minds, is illustrated not only 
by Bernhardi's books, but by nearly every public act 
of the Germans since the war began. Bethmann-HoU- 
weg dismisses the undertaking of Germany to respect 
the neutrality of Belgium as " just a scrap of paper " 
and it is not until six months later that he realises the 
effect of that declaration on the mind of the world and 
proceeds to explain it away. The Germans desolate 
Belgium and murder its public men and then appeal 
to the American people, the most humane and senti- 
mental people in the world, for sympathy. They 
torpedo ship-loads of helpless non-combatants, and 
while they are doing it ask the world to accept them 
as the champions of the freedom of the seas. It is not 
that they are cynical. Cynicism is the product of dis- 
illusionment and unfaith. It is rather that they are 
afflicted with a frightful seriousness that makes them 
indifferent to pity or humour or even ordinary caution. 
They have become obsessed by an idea, the idea of racial 
supremacy, of " Kultur " imposed by the sword in the 
interests of the inferior types. They burn and slay to 
redeem the world. Not since the Crescent came out 
of the desert with sword and flame has there been such 
a frenzy of fanaticism in which the passion of conquest 
is charged with the fervour of a fierce gospel of salvation. 
What is that gospel ? 

Through the window of the bedroom in which the 
doctor has imprisoned me for a day or two, there 
streams with the October sunlight the sound of a boy 
whistling the " Marseillaise " as he passes by. I do 
not mention the fact because it is unusual, but because 
it is usual. It is one of the incidents of the war that 
the great hymn of Liberty and Democracy has become 
the most familiar sound on this side of the channel, 



240 THE WAR LORDS 

and not in towns only, for it is as familiar in the lanes of 
Buckinghamshire as it is in the streets of London. 

And I do not mention the fact as trivial, but as 
profoundly significant. It recalls the axiom of Fletcher 
of Saltoun about the songs of a people. It means that, 
with a sure instinct, the country has seized on the central 
fact of the struggle. The boy who is passing just now 
might not be able to give a very clear idea in words of 
what we are fighting about, but he knows that the heart 
of the matter is in the song that he whistles so lustily. 
And he is right. 

To make the point clear, let me recall the assertion 
attributed to Hauptmann that the German soldier goes 
into battle with a copy of Nietzsche as well as Homer 
and Goethe in his pocket. If he made that assertion 
he felt that he could give no better assurance of the 
greatness of Germany's cause and of the enlightment and 
culture of her sons. Let us accept the statement for all 
it was intended to convey. We have our symbols : On 
the one side the soldier going to battle with Nietzsche 
in his pocket; on the other the soldier going to battle 
with the " Marseillaise " on his lips. Now the " Marseil- 
laise " sang Europe free. In that great song the spirit 
of human liberty, human equality, human brotherhood 
found deathless utterance. What is the alternative that 
Nietzsche offers us ? If we understand that we shall 
understand the spiritual motives behind the war. 

Let us, however, first clear the ground of a possible 
objection. Not Nietzsche, it will be said, but Treitschke, 
embodies the soul of Germany — ^Treitschke who m_ade 
the Prussian State his religion, the House of Hohen- 
zoUern his divinity, and war the instrument of salvation. 
It is true that Nietzsche was the foe of nationalism, that 
he talked of a United Europe and " a good European," 
and that, while Treitschke's political assertion of the 




General von Bernhardi 



GENERAL VON BERNHARDI 241 

doctrine of Might was filling his lecture room at Berlin, 
Nietzsche's books could hardly find a publisher. Never- 
theless, it is Nietzsche who is the true prophet of the new 
reHgion. He is the fierce singer in the Prussian Israel. 
It was Treitschke's part to link the new religion to the 
State — to show that Prussia was the chosen people of 
the sword, the super-race of Nietzsche's vision. 

Now it is not easy to state with clearness the philosophy 
of the tragic genius whose whole career was an unhappy 
sequence of physical suffering, intellectual revolt, and 
mental disorder, and who spent the last eleven years 
of his life in a madhouse. He is as full of contradictions 
as Ruskin whom he resembles in so many respects — 
in his discursiveness, his ferocity, his passionate revolt, 
his personal quarrels, his mental distress. But just as 
through all the apparent contradictions of Ruskin the 
lamp of spiritual beauty shines undimmed, so through 
all the contradictions of Nietzsche the gospel of brute 
force runs like a thread of steel. Ruskin loved humanity : 
Nietzsche hated humanity. 

It is not an uncommon thing for the physically 
thwarted Hfe to take revenge on itself by exalting 
physical violence and strength. Henley exhibited 
something of this paradox. But Nietzsche made Might 
his god. The universe for him had no moral significance. 
Life was a-moral and all the moral values associated 
with it were fictions which " the herd " had been able 
to impose on the individual for its protection. Thus 
" truthfulness " is a device of the herd to make men 
express themselves by clear and constant signs instead 
of concealing their purposes; " unselfishness " is a trick 
for benefiting the herd; " pity " is a parasite that pre- 
serves that which is ripe for death — a parasite that 
defeats the first principle of our humanity which is that 
" the weak and the botched shall perish." 

Q 



242 THE WAR LORDS 

Against all this morality of the herd, invented for 
the protection of the weak and the unfit, Nietzsche 
comes forward with his new scheme of values based on 
" the Will to Power." The universe is for the aristocrat, 
for the strong man, for the bird of prey. " It is not 
surprising," he says, " that the lambs should bear a 
grudge against the great birds of prey, but that is no 
reason for blaming the great birds of prey for taking 
the little lambs." And then, pursuing this allegory, he 
shows how the lambs {i.e., the herd) call the bird of 
prey " evil " and that which is opposed to it (i.e., the 
lambs) " good," and so reach that " slave morality " 
which he sets out to overthrow. 

Not that he wants to get rid of the slaves. They are 
necessary to the aristocrat, for " Slavery is of the essence 
of Culture." The slaves may even preserve their 
morality among themselves. But that morality will 
have no meaning for the blonde masters, the elect, the 
" higher men " whose passion for Power will be the one 
uncontrolled motive of action. These are emancipated 
from the wretched gospel of current moral values. Pity, 
justice, truth — these things are not for them. The 
desire for Power will drive them forward reckless of 
consequences. " An order of rank will be estabHshed, 
based upon real values. There will be no remorse in 
man's heart any longer." And out of this cruel, ruth- 
less exercise of might, there will emerge the Superman, 
the goal of all the ages, the fruit of all the austere 
sacrifices that men must make to produce him. 

It is a little difficult to gather what he will be like, 
or whether he will be a man or a race of men. For 
sometimes Nietzsche, with that Napoleonic obsession 
which affiicts his type of deranged mind, suggested only 
one colossal figure towering over life, while later he 
seemed to conceive a race of supermen, divorced from 



GENERAL VON BERNHARDI 243 

all " slave morality " and living like Pagan gods in free 
exercise of power without a purpose, except the purpose 
of fighting, the glory of action, the doing of great, fierce, 
cruel things. 

For their only creed is the creed of valour, their only 
passion the love of war. 

" Horribly clangs its silver bow; and although it 
comes like the night, war is nevertheless Apollo, the 
true divinity for consecrating and purifying States. . . . 
Ye say, a good cause will hallow even war r I say unto 
you : a good war hallows every cause. War and courage 
have done greater things than love of your neighbour. 
. . . Against the deviation of the State-ideal into a 
money-ideal the only remedy is war, and once again 
war, in the emotions of which this at any rate becomes 
clear, that in love to fatherland and prince the State 
produces an ethical impulse indicative of a much higher 
destiny." 

It follows from all this that, while Nietzsche hated 
democracy and socialism, he hated most of all Chris- 
tianity with its " slave morality " of pity, justice, truth, 
mercy, unselfishness, and its conception of God as the 
Deity of the sick, of " God degenerated into the contra- 
diction of life instead of being its transfiguration and 
eternal Yea." To him, the son of the parsonage, Chris- 
tianity, is the triumph of the physiologically inferior 
people, of the slaves who, fearing their masters and want- 
ing power, imposed this " curse," this " eternal blemish " 
on mankind. His proudest claim is that he is the Anti- 
Christ. 

With all its splendour of rhetoric, its prophetic vision, 
its shattering originality, its frequent and noble inspira- 
tion, the gospel of Nietzsche is the gospel of the general 
paralytic. Megalomania and extravagant self-assertion 
are notorious symptoms of that disease. In the end 



244 THE WAR LORDS 

Nietzsche became his own Superman. His autobio- 
graphical Ecce Homo was a grotesque exaltation of his 
achievements, and he imagined himself now a famous 
criminal, now the King of Italy, now God. " Let us 
be happy," he would say. " I am God, I have made this 
caricature." And then, twenty-five years ago, he passed 
into the silence of the madhouse, from whence he never 
emerged alive. 

But his religion of Valour — the Will to Power — ^re- 
mained. He who had been utterly neglected in life 
became suddenly the prophet of that young Germany 
which Treitschke had been preparing to conquer the 
world. His books passed through innumerable editions, 
his Zarathustra inspired Strauss' most famous work in 
which we may see the new gospel in the terms of music. 
And, not least significant, it is to Nietzsche that Bern- 
hardi went for the text of that orange-covered book 
which unveiled Germany to the world last August. On 
the fly-leaf of that book is Nietzsche's saying that " War 
and courage have done greater things than love of your 
neighbour." In a dozen words it states the whole issue 
of the war. 

Now this triumph of Nietzsche unlocks the secret of 
Germany. He has not, of course, any more than 
Treitschke, created the Prussian spirit or the Prussian 
ambitions; but he has given them watchwords and a 
faith. He did not write for Prussia, which, indeed, was 
the object of his hate, and, so far from deifying the State, 
he was the bitter enemy of nationalism. But Prussia has 
turned his teaching into its own channels. And that 
for a reason which is profoundly significant and worth 
considering. 

In that remarkable and eloquent book, Germany and 
England — in which enthusiasm for German ideals and 
militarism is so strangely mingled with fear of Germany 



GENERAL VON BERNHARDT 245 

— the late Professor Cramb forecast the present conflict. 
In doing so he gave the modern German view of the 
great movement of the German spirit through the 
centuries. Alaric broke the might of Rome, but in con- 
quering Rome the Teutons were themse ves conquered, 
for they adopted Rome's rehgion and Rome's culture. 
Their native instinct for religion was diverted into a 
false direction. But having once adopted the new faith, 
Germany strove to live that faith, and for more than 
thirty generations she has struggled and wrestled to see 
with eyes that were not her eyes, to worship a God that 
was not her God, to live with a world vision that was not 
her vision, and to strive for a heaven that was not her 
heaven. But her spirit lived on. Always beyond the 
grave of Christ she saw the grave of Balder, and higher 
than the New Jerusalem the shining walls of Asgard and 
Valhalla. With Luther she flung off Rome, with her 
" higher criticism " she undermined Galilee, and now, 
at the opening of the twentieth century, " Germany, 
her long travail past, is reunited to her pristine genius, 
her creative power in religion and in thought." 

The faith of Galilee, the faith of renunciation, of pity, 
of love, the faith that scorns the flesh and looks beyond 
the grave is at last dethroned and the ancient religion 
of Valour, the religion of Odin, the War God, comes 
forth to battle, emancipated from the thraldom of 
fourteen centuries. In the light of this revelation we 
see with a new understanding that strange cult of 
Napoleonism which has dominated German thought. 
We have a new interpretation of that magic world of 
myth that Wagner's mighty genius created. These 
things were the foreshadowings of to-day. They 
announced the return of Odin to the earth. And the 
gospel is fully revealed in that Bible of Nietzsche which 
is in the German knapsack: 



246 THE WAR LORDS 

" Ye have heard how in old times it was said, Blessed 
are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth; but I say 
unto you. Blessed are the valiant, for they shall make 
the earth their throne. And ye have heard men say, 
Blessed are the poor in spirit; but I say unto you, 
Blessed are the great in soul and the free in spirit, for 
they shall enter into Valhalla. And ye have heard men 
say, Blessed are the peace-makers ; but I say unto you, 
Blessed are the war-makers, for they shall be called, if 
not the sons of Jahve, the children of Odin, who is 
greater than Jahve." 

And the children of Odin are not unworthy of their 
creed. Their word is a lie and their path is a track of 
desolation and death. The " horned men " that Odin 
of old sent forth against the new religion of peace and 
mercy left no stain like that of Belgium to insult the 
hght of day. The Odin of old was a god of fire and sword, 
but he did not cant of Culture. He burned, but he did 
not say, as the Frankfurter Zeitung said in commenting 
on the destruction of Rheims Cathedral, that war would 
bring a nobler form of art. He slew the weak and the 
helpless, but he did not say that he was making way 
for richer forms of life. The Paganism of Culture which 
challenges Christianity is a far worse thing than the 
Paganism of heathendom which Christianity overthrew. 

The Kaiser has taken Attila and his Huns as his model. 
But these horrors are not the work of real Huns. Attila 
did not talk of culture or call himself " the Scourge of 
God." He was a rapacious barbarian and did not affect 
to be anything else. But Belgium has been desolated 
in cold blood, on calculated principles, by a nation of 
philosophers and intellectuals. It has been butchered 
and outraged not from lust or revenge or even from 
cruelty. It has been butchered on a nicely considered 
theory and according to the doctrines of a savage faith. 



GENERAL VON BERNHARDT 247 

And it is that faith with which we are concerned. For 
behind all the apparent and even real motives of the 
war — dynastic, commercial, racial, and so on — -there is 
a profoundly spiritual motive. It is a conflict, not so 
much of nations as of ideals, not of kings but of religions. 
It will decide whether our civilisation is to rest on a 
material foundation or a moral foundation, whether it 
is to be governed by the calculations of the head or the 
intuitions of the soul, whether it is to be in its essence a 
spiritual or a mechanical force. 

In claiming that in this conflict of ideals it is we who 
have our faces turned towards the light, it is not sug- 
gested that we are free from the idolatry of Force. The 
astonishing triumph of the mind over matter in the last 
two decades has left its mark deep on this country. The 
loosening of the foundations of faith has been accom- 
panied, perhaps hastened, by a material mastery of the 
forces of nature that was undreamed of a generation ago. 
We have learned to sail the sky and to send engines of 
death through the depths of the sea ; we have chained the 
lightnings and made the pulses of the air the invisible 
messengers of our will; we have invented guns that 
carry death for twenty miles and explosives more 
terrible than any thunderbolt. All this growth of 
material power has been unchecked by an equivalent 
growth of moral power or social conscience, and the 
result is a certain tyrannous exploitation of self based 
largely on the possession of material power. The 
Prussian spirit is not confined to Prussia. It is every- 
where. That, and not the German people, is the 
ultimate enemy. The road-hog, who uses that hideous, 
bullying horn that sounds like a brutal curse on every- 
thing that impedes his path, is the symbol of the 
Prussian spirit in our midst. 

But we have not made brute Force a national idol, 



248 THE WAR LORDS 

sustained by a philosophy and worshipped as a new 
reHgion. We may still broadly claim that wherever 
we have gone we have carried the spirit of freedom and 
the authority of the moral law. We tried the mailed 
fist once across the Atlantic and lost the United States 
and we have never tried it again. The Liberal faith 
saved Canada seventy years ago and it has saved the 
British Empire throughout. That is why Australia 
and Canada are sending their legions to us in our need 
— not grudgingly or of necessity, but cheerful givers. 
" Thy father has sent his son to me : I'll send my son to 
him." 

Now the case is otherwise with Germany. In saying 
this do not let us forget to be just. After all, we are 
what our circumstances make us. We had the good 
fortune to inherit an island, with the inviolate seas for 
a defence and the free ocean as a pathway to all the 
world. Liberalism had a chance on such a soil. The 
Germans had the bad fortune to be cast in the midst of 
Europe, with Slavs to the East and Latins to the South 
and West. They lived with fear and survived by 
fighting. 

And the weapon that had given them freedom became 
the idol of their worship. They fell, in a national sense, 
under the spell of a monster who has made all their 
wonderful genius and their fine character subservient 
to his will. The doctrine of Force by which they had 
" hacked their way through " became their gospel. 
Prussia imposed it on the rest of Germany. Treitschke, 
the prophet of the cult, preached it as ruthlessly against 
the inferior German States before the Federation as 
afterwards he preached it against other Powers. It 
ceased to be a means of defence and became the expres- 
sion of the national spirit; and Bernhardi has stated 
the doctrine of purgation by war and the righteousness 



GENERAL VON BERNHARDT 249 

of unprovoked wars with the cold abstractness of a 
college don. 

The German people accepted the gospel as a necessity 
of their existence. They are of our own stock and in 
our land would have developed on our lines. But their 
position and their political development have placed 
them under the heel of militarism and at the mercy of 
the depotism that they hate but have been unable to 
destroy. The sense of enveloping danger, above all the 
sense of the vastness of the shadow of Russia have made 
them prisoners of the system that is the creation of the 
Prussian aristocracy and the cold-blooded philosophers 
of Might. 

Perhaps they might have broken the enchantment if 
they had not been surrounded by fear. There is a 
striking passage in the White Book that shows that in 
those thrilling days that preceded the war Sir Edward 
Grey felt that fear was not baseless — the passage in 
which he undertook, if peace was preserved, to work for 
an arrangement which would secure Germany against 
any menace of hostile action by Russia, France, or our- 
selves. It is worth thinking about that passage and 
the light it throws on the past. The war came out of the 
spirit of fear as well as the doctrine of Force. 

But it is with the latter that we now have to deal. 
It perverted all the energies of Germany to one terrific 
purpose — the purpose of making itself terrible in war. 
Its civil liberties were ground to powder by an insolent 
caste. Its astonishing genius for organisation became 
the instrument for military efficiency, and Bismarck's 
schemes of State Socialism were all governed by the twin 
purpose of making the people subservient at home and 
feared abroad. Even the nationalisation of the rail- 
ways, admirable though its results have been, was 
designed not as a measure of social amelioration, but 



250 THE WAR LORDS 

as a measure of military necessity. Every ingenuity 
of the science of destruction has been developed with 
absorbing energy and no consideration of pity or 
humanity has been allowed to interfere with the decrees 
of the god of blood and iron. That deity has no bowels 
of compassion. He grinds the small nations he has 
undertaken to protect under his iron heel and talks of a 
sacred treaty as " a scrap of paper." He strews the 
seas with his engines of death regardless of what dis- 
aster they may bring to the innocent. He flings his 
bombs from the sky upon the sleeping city, scornful of 
women and children. He burns towns and villages and 
slaughters the old and the weak, not in anger or in lust, 
but according to an iron rule. He is merciless even with 
his own. He flings them in close formation on certain 
death. They must hack their way through or die. 
" Better to lose an army corps than change a plan." 
It is all Force, Force, Force, soulless and cruel and 
barbaric. It is divorced from all moral considerations, 
from mercy, from justice, from pity. It is an idol of 
iron that stands to-day in a sea of blood. 

Caught in the toils of the great machine that had 
become their master, the German people became its 
slaves, and under the influence of their professors, who 
have always been the intellectual instrument of the 
military tyranny, returned to the faith of Odin. The 
great democratic movement of 1848 had failed and 
Bismarck had put the seal of despotism upon them. 
Denied the healthful expression of liberty, they found 
refuge in the doctrine of racial superiority. They 
could not free themselves, but they had a divine mission 
to enslave the world. It is a remarkable fact that the 
doctrine that the German nation were the chosen people 
of the earth — a doctrine which received its impulse from 
the war of 1870 — came originally from a Frenchman 



GENERAL VON BERNHARDI 251 

and that its chief exponent to-day is an Englishman. It 
was Count Gobineau, the French diplomatist, who first 
developed the idea of racial aristocracy and saw in the 
German people the conquering strain who should inherit 
the earth. The revolutionary spirit of France, with its 
assertion of the equality of men and its ideas of demo- 
cracy, revolted his aristocratic instincts, and he found 
in Prussia his ideal not only of aristocratic government 
but of a super-race. He even discovered for himself 
a Teutonic origin. The idea of a super-race is not new. 
In a vague sense it is common to most nations; but in 
the western world it is only the Jews who have culti- 
vated it as a creed, and it is significant that the Jew who 
has popularised Gobineau in this country has only one 
serious disagreement with his author, and that is that 
he should be so blind as to suggest that the Germans were 
the super-race when it was quite obvious that it was the 
Jews. 

Naturally the Gobineau doctrine was agreeable to 
the German people, and with the failure of the demo- 
cratic movement and the triumph of Bismarck it may be 
said that the idea of racial supremacy supplanted the 
Liberal idea. The Liberal movement practically ceased 
to exist, and though the socialistic gospel of Marx took 
deep root in the country it was always overshadowed 
and thwarted by the racial idea, which the Junkers and 
the militarists encouraged as an antidote to democracy. 
To this gospel Nietzsche contributed the poison of the 
Will to Power, and Treitschke the historical groundwork 
and the practical aims, while within recent years an 
Englishman, Mr. Houston Chamberlain, a son-in-law 
of Wagner, has carried the doctrine to a point at which 
extravagance borders on farce. But it is farce which 
the Kaiser, who is not any more remarkable for humour 
than his people, evidently took with profound serious- 



252 THE WAR LORDS 

ness, for he made the last of Chamberlain's works, with 
its exaltation of the HohenzoUerns and its suggestion 
that Christ Himself, if He was not a German, was at 
least not a Jew, the subject of extravagant approval. 

All these influences that have been at work upon the 
soul of Germany are summarised in that book with 
which Bernhardi heralded the storm. It is not neces- 
sary here to recall the contents of that volume, with its 
naked assertion of the gospel of Might, its panegyrics 
on war as, in Treitschke's phrase, " the medicine of God," 
its justification of the unprovoked war, its scorn for the 
" poisonous " peace movement, its exaltation of the 
Germans as the warlike race, its declaration that " France 
must be so completely overthrown that she can never 
get in our way again," and its frank proposals for sweep- 
ing the decadent English out of the path of the people 
who were destined for world dominion. The progress 
of the war has led General Bernhardi to attempt to 
explain himself away. We do not recognise the prophet 
of war and the preacher of its " biological " justice in 
the author of those gentle messages to the Americans. 
But his book is on record against him. In it is the whole 
gospel of Odinism against which the world is at war. 

Professor Cramb, in his enthusiasm for the religion 
of Valour, seemed to think that Odin was coming to 
triumph, if not in Germany, perhaps then in England. 
He was mistaken. This world is not going back to 
barbarism. We cannot live under the sanction of 
Attila and his Huns and the clank of the sword of 
Zabern, even though that sword be in our own hand. 

This Europe that, only a few short months ago, 
seemed so secure and happy has grown up out of the 
darkness of the ages through suffering and sacrifice. 
Its spirit has been moulded by prophets and sages and 
inspired by poets and martyrs. It is not going to 



GENERAL VON BERNHARDI 253 

sacrifice all that it has won, to turn its back upon the 
light towards which it has travelled so painfully, at the 
bidding of Bernhardi's drill sergeant. We understand 
very well the issue that is lit up by the flames of war. 
It is the issue of Paganism and Christianity. And in 
that issue is involved everything that, having, we trea- 
sure, or, having not, we seek — the liberties that men 
have wrung out of the agonies of a thousand years, the 
delicate growths of human and national relationships that 
have come to birth under the sanction of a humane 
rehgion, the spiritual equality which gives to the weak — 
even the weak State — the right to live his life without 
fear of the strong, the authority of the moral law in the 
affairs of men and nations, the supremacy of Right over 
Might, and of the spiritual over the material. 

All these things perish from the earth if Odin and his 
prophet Nietzsche and his disciple Bernhardi prevail. 
But they will not prevail. The world will not exchange 
the morality of Christ for the mailed fist of Odin, and 
the democracies of the earth which have so slowly and 
painfully won their way to some measure of freedom 
will not yield to the Superman born on the threshold 
of a madhouse. 



The boy who goes by whistling the " Marseillaise " 
has the eternal truth on his lips. While that song rings 
in the heart of humanity Odin can never recover his 
ancient sway though his servant Krupp build guns as 
big as the Matterhorn. 



SIR JOHN FRENCH 

AND BRITISH GENERALSHIP 

It is probable that no war since Bannockburn demo- 
cratised the battlefield has been so revolutionary in 
method and resource as that into which Europe was 
plunged in August 19 14. It was forty-four years since 
Germany and France had last been engaged in warfare 
on any considerable scale; over twelve years since 
England had been at war with the Boer republics, ten 
years since Russia had been at war with Japan. The 
echoes of the Balkan wars, it is true, had hardly died 
away; but those wars, bloody though they were, had 
the character of the wars of the past. The movements 
were rapid, the decisions swift, and the resources and 
methods employed were famihar. It was only in the 
Russo-Japanese war that any suggestion was given that 
the art and conduct of war were on the eve of vital 
changes, consequent upon the dominating influence 
which artillery had established in the field. The battle 
of Mukden was the precursor of the siege warfare which, 
with its dullness and its ugliness, was to supersede the 
romantic war of swift surprise, crashing blow, and shift- 
ing scene. 

But in the ten years that had passed since Mukden 
there had been developments whose effect could only 
be to differentiate still further modern warfare from 
that of the past. The conquest of the air, the invention 
of wireless communication, the improvement in motor 
traction were among the most important of the factors 

254 



SIR JOHN FRENCH 255 

which came into operation, and inasmuch as the practice 
of warfare, like the practice of anything else, is largely 
governed by its tools it was clear that when war on the 
grand scale came it would be marked by new possibilities 
which could only be dimly imagined. What would be 
the relation of the mobile gun and the bomb-proof fort ? 
Would Lord Sydenham's view that the fortress was 
effete and that earthworks were the essential corollary 
of modern artillery be justified ? What place would 
the cavalry have in future encounters ? Would it be 
rendered as obsolete by the motor vehicle as the cabhorse 
had been rendered obsolete by the " taxi " ? Would its 
function as the vision of the army be assumed by the 
aeroplane ? What was the true function of the air in 
warfare ? Would the airship prove to be an effective 
mihtary instrument, or would the aeroplane with its 
superiority in numbers and mobility reduce it to a 
clumsy futility ? 

These were typical of the questions to which only 
practical experience could furnish decisive answers. 
But so far as the calculable elements were concerned the 
advantage was, of course, decisively with that power 
which had made preparation for war its supreme function. 
That advantage was not limited to the specifically 
military equipment which Germany had organised with 
such astonishing thoroughness. It extended to the 
whole field of the national life, every department of which 
was developed with a view to its effective co-opera- 
tion for the purposes of war. The contempt which 
Germany had for the military potentialities of Great 
Britain was not unreasonable. It was founded, not 
merely upon the negligible proportions of the British 
Army, but upon the fact that the whole conception of 
the state in this country was non-warlike and its organi- 
sation entirely industrial and pacific. We rehed upon 



256 THE WAR LORDS 

the sea for our protection and still believed in the maxim 
of Chatham that "the Navy is the Standing Army of 
England " — a maxim in which a defensive and not an 
offensive attitude is implicit. Had the Prussian mind 
been more open to the teaching of history it would have 
understood, from such episodes as the American civil 
war, that great military resources may be latent in a 
non-military people ; but it has been one of the mistakes 
of the Prussians to calculate only on the visible and the 
material forces and to ignore the human and spiritual 
forces that they have challenged. 

But though, tested by the Continental scale, the 
British Army was negHgible, there were two points in 
which it was important. It was small in numbers, but 
it was great in experience. It was the only professional 
army in Europe, and, apart from the Russian, it was the 
only army that had had the supreme qualifications of 
actual experience of war. It may be said with almost 
strict truth that when the German and French armies 
faced each other last August there was hardly a man on 
either side who had seen a shot fired in battle. The 
English Army, on the other hand, in addition to the 
qualities of the professional soldier who has served aU 
over the world, had in it a powerful stiffening of seasoned 
men who had been through the South African War and 
had been inured to all the rough vicissitudes of battle. 

And the second point was not less vital. The 
British Army was generalled by men all of whom were 
familiar with the practice of war and whose merits had 
been discovered not in manoeuvres but on the battle- 
field. The importance of this fact in the early stages 
of the struggle was very great. It is one of the para- 
doxes of Lord Fisher that " disobedience is the whole 
art of war." " In peace," he will tell you, " you want a 
man who will obey orders. In war you want a man 



nrfrrg a i^ ii l iiw i i^^m\ /rviM.m 



.•>''■■ — •<.T -■•/■'-V-?:^, 




eenAti 



Sir John French 



SIR JOHN FRENCH 257 

who knows when to disobey them. Nelson disobeyed 
Jervis at St. Vincent and won the battle; he disobeyed 
at Copenhagen and bluffed the Danes into surrender." 
Perhaps it is a perilous maxim; but it is true that war 
is an art as well as a science and that one may have great 
success in the pedantries of manoeuvres and be dis- 
covered to be a great fool in the presence of realities on 
the battlefield. Now, except for a few men like Hinden- 
burg, Pau, and Castelnau, who as youngsters took part 
in the campaign of 1870, none of the generals on either 
the French or the German side had ever been under fire. 
They were theorists of war. They were the product of 
manoeuvres and textbooks. They might be good men, 
but they had to be taken on trust. And the result was 
what might have been expected. Von Moltke was 
deposed within two months of the beginning of the war, 
and on both sides there was a rapid displacement of 
inefficient generals. Forty disappeared on the French 
side alone. 

The case was different with the English. There was 
not an officer in high command in the Army who had 
not spent a large part of his life in active service in 
the field. Many of them bore the witness of old battle- 
fields on their persons; all of them carried the symbols 
of some act of valour or some display of military talent. 
They had fought in many fields, on the frontiers of 
India, in Afghanistan, in Burmah, in Somaliland, in 
Egypt, but chiefly in South Africa. In that great 
struggle they had learned the meaning of war and had 
tasted all its bitterness. It had humbled them, and 
in humbHng them had made them better students and 
better soldiers. No one who went through the South 
African War emerged from it wholly unpurged of military 
arrogance — that arrogance that is born in the classroom 
and dies on the battlefield. 



258 THE WAR LORDS 

The saying that South Africa is the grave of reputations 
is older than the second Boer War, but it was that war 
which gave it the significance that attaches to it to-day. 
BuUer's failure, though most conspicuous, was only 
typical of what happened in the early stages of the war, 
and in the later stages Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener, 
though more successful, cannot be said to have added 
to their reputations. There was, however, one excep- 
tion to the depressing rule — one reputation which found 
in South Africa not a grave but a birthplace. Sir John 
French went into the war unknown to the world: he 
emerged from it with the most secure reputation as a 
fighting general in the British Army, This suggests no 
reflection of Lord Kitchener whose success has been that 
of the organiser of war rather than that of the general 
in the field. 

If we ask what was the source of that deep and con- 
fident faith in Sir John French which was the product 
of the war we shall find that it was not merely the almost 
unvarying success which attended him, but the sense 
that in him there worked an original faculty of a very 
considerable kind. Now originality in any walk of hfe 
is hard to achieve. It is most difficult of all to achieve 
in the military profession, in which the law of discipHne 
makes the free play of the mind seem Hke the most 
dangerous of all heresies. Discipline and originality 
are natural enemies, but they are enemies that have 
to be reconciled if the highest efficiency of an army is to 
be realised. It was this necessity which haunted Bern- 
hardi when he was showing Germany how it was to win 
the next war. Prince Billow has said that the spirit 
of discipline, even without enthusiasm, had enabled 
Prussia to march to victory in the past ; but Bernhardi, 
like Scharnhorst before him, saw that in the new con- 
ditions of war mere reliance upon the unquestioning 



SIR JOHN FRENCH 259 

discipKne of the mass was not enough and he was never 
tired of preaching that, with discipHne, there must be 
the element of individual initiative. 

If this element is important in the case of the men it 
is vastly more important in the case of the officer. But 
the sterihsing dominion of precedent and tradition in his 
case is most difficult to attack because it is founded not 
only in the idea of obedience but in professional pride. 
It is easy to confuse loyalty to the spirit of the profession, 
which should be constant, with loyalty to its methods, 
which should be varying. " It's a way we have in the 
army " becomes an easy formula for getting rid of think- 
ing and for treating every one who dares to think as a 
dangerous person. 

Now Sir John French is one of those men who are 
not terrorised by tradition. He has an independent 
Hfe of the mind which enables him to shake himself free 
from conventional thought, and he encourages the same 
freedom in others. When he was appointed Chief of 
the General Staif in 191 2 he issued a memorandum 
inviting officers to contribute to the pages of the new 
Army Review and to give expression to original ideas 
even though they differed from the doctrines of the 
official text-books. He has the wisdom to see that war 
is both a science and an art — that it is necessary to 
equip the mind with all the science of war, with all that 
has been thought and done by the masters in the past, 
and that it is equally necessary in action to be the master 
and not the slave of that science. Sir Evelyn Wood 
said recently that when he inspected Major French's 
regiment many years ago he asked a superior his opinion 
of the Major. " For ever reading military books " was 
the reply. And his sister, Mrs. Despard — under whose 
eye he was brought up after the death of his parents — 
has borne similar witness to his life-long concentration 



26o THE WAR LORDS 

upon the one theme that dominates his mind — the 
theory and practice of war. 

For, in spite of an early predilection for preaching, 
he has been a soldier all his life. It is true that in 
obedience to the parental example — for his father, 
Captain French, of Ripple Vale, Kent, had been an 
officer in the Navy — young French, in 1866, at the age 
of fourteen, joined the senior service and served four 
years as a naval cadet on the Britannia. But the natural 
genius of the lad prevailed, and in 1874 -^^ began his 
mihtary career with a commission in the 19th Hussars. 
It was here that his independence of mind began to show 
itself, not in assertive eccentricity (for he is the most 
modest of men and his genius consists in the possession 
of common sense in an uncommon measure), but in the 
fresh and original thought he brought to bear on his 
profession. His regiment was not in those days a smart 
affair. It was one of those, formed after the Indian 
Mutiny, in which only small men were enlisted and which, 
in consequence, were known as the " Dumpies." The 
atmosphere of the officers' mess in the 19th Hussars was 
no better and no worse than the average in those days 
of dry rot. The military calling was merely a phase of 
the sporting equipment of a gentleman, and drill and 
manoeuvres were rather dull and perfunctory incidents 
in an otherwise agreeable mode of life, while anything 
Hke the serious study of the science of war marked a man 
out as a curiosity, if not as rather a vulgar fellow. 
Soldiering was a sport which could only be degraded by 
study. And as for the cavalry, its chief function, as a 
witty cavalry officer said, was to give tone to what would 
otherwise be a vulgar brawl. It needed a man of strong 
will and clear ideas to cut across such ingrained habits of 
thought and to set up a new professional standard, and 
John French was the man for the task. His influence 



SIR JOHN FRENCH 261 

prevailed, and the subsequent reputation achieved by 
the 19th was chiefly due to his efforts. 

His success here and always was more enduring because 
it was won in such a human and unpretentious way. 
He has not the grim aloofness of commanders like 
Wellington or Kitchener, nor does he cultivate the 
Napoleonic arts of flattery. But he succeeds neverthe- 
less in conveying that impression which is essential to 
the great general — the impression that he has the secret 
of victory in him. Without that assurance an army 
goes into battle robbed of its most powerful asset. Sir 
John French conveys the impression, not by enveloping 
himself in an atmosphere of remoteness and mystery, 
but by giving the sense of a singularly sane, balanced, 
daylight mind, firm in its judgments, yet open to con- 
viction; masterful, yet without the fatal blemish of 
vanity or ambition; instructed yet without the taint 
of the doctrinaire. He is, in a word, the ordinary man 
in an extraordinary degree, fearless of danger, im- 
perturbable in action, free alike from exaltations and 
despairs, cool when the temperature is highest and warm 
when the blast is coldest, and, in all circumstances, 
human, generous, a little hot-tempered, and always 
comprehensible. One would be tempted to say that 
he was the typical Englishman, but for the fact that he 
is Irish. 

But in spite of his high personal qualities and the 
universal affection with which he is regarded, his path 
has not been unobstructed. No man who thinks in- 
dependently and acts on his thinking can expect that 
in a world governed by precedent — least of all can he 
expect it in an institution which like the Army makes 
every rut sacred. He became known to the conventional 
as a man with rather heretical notions about the use of 
cavalry — for example, he taught his men that they might 



262 THE WAR LORDS 

have to fight on foot — and he had the distinction (and, 
incidentally, the good fortune) to be passed over at a 
critical moment in his career by the late Duke of Cam- 
bridge to whom a new idea was perdition and the man 
who entertained it a peril. Even his successes were to 
the pedants gained by means so unorthodox as to rule 
him out as an unsafe man. Thus, when commanding 
the cavalry in the manoeuvres of 1897 he achieved a 
brilliant success, his tactics were severely assailed as 
unsound and as involving undue risks, and nomination 
to the command of the cavalry in the Boer War was 
opposed on the ground that he was " inefficient to com- 
mand in the field." Fortunately, General Buller had 
had experience of General French in Egypt, at Abu 
Klea and Metemneh, and he insisted on his appointment 
to the cavalry command. 

Now if one judged war as a science only, as the Ger- 
mans do, and not as an art, as Napoleon did, there would 
have been a reasonable case against the selection of 
French. For though he has been one of the most careful 
students of war of his time and, when at the War Office 
as Assistant Adjutant-General, devoted himself daily 
to working out tactical problems, he is essentially a 
pragmatist in war. He knows that war is too irrational, 
too incalculable a thing to be governed by rules — that 
every situation is unprecedented, is made up of factors, 
human, material, moral, that have never occurred in the 
same relation before, that in the last resource it is judg- 
ment, inspiration, common sense, informed by science but 
not controlled by it, which must be in command. To put 
it in another way, it is not a man's theories that count 
but his personality. It was possible to condemn French 
on his work in manoeuvres because according to the 
rules he took too great risks, and manoeuvres having 
no reality could not demonstrate that those risks were 



SIR JOHN FRENCH 263 

warranted. Only actual war could reveal whether 
audacity and caution were in due equipoise. 

And that was the revelation of the Boer War in regard 
to Sir John French. It showed that he had the genius 
for seizing a situation swiftly and truly, that he was 
always master of the whole sum, not only the sum of his 
own resources, but the sum of his enemy's resources, 
that his risks, though they might ignore rules, never 
ignored facts. As an example, take the best known but 
not the greatest of his achievements in the Boer War — 
the rehef of Kimberley. When French hurled his 
cavalry division at the Boer lines he took risks which 
in manoeuvres would have been denounced as fatal. 
By every theory of the text-books he should have been 
destroyed. Instead, the fury, unexpectedness, momen- 
tum of the act carried him through the storm unscathed. 
The clouds of dust flung up by the flying feet of the 
horses enveloped the charge in obscurity, and the Boers 
for once lost their heads and fired confusedly. Their 
Hne was pierced, they fled in disorder, and Kimberley 
was relieved. It was the first great success of the war. 
It was achieved in the teeth of all doctrine, and on 
the basis of actual present conditions, the meaning and 
values of which only a swift and sure intuition could 
reveal. 

Or take that still greater, because more complex and 
sustained, feat at Koodoosrand Drift. French and his 
cavalry, worn out after the long action at Dronfield, 
were resting in the evening when news came that Cronje 
was fleeing to Bloemfontein with all his force, and that 
French must cut him off at Koodoosrand Drift. On 
the face of it so great a task was physically impossible 
to the exhausted horses and tired men, but French is 
never overawed by the " impossible." What does the 
soldier live for except to prove that the impossible is 



264 THE WAR LORDS 

possible and snatch victory as the reward ? " Impos- 
sible ? Is that all ? Then the sooner we set about it the 
better," is his attitude. By midnight he was moving; 
by nine o'clock in the morning his advanced patrol came 
in sight of the enemy crossing the Modder in a confused 
mass, and never dreaming of danger from the west. 
The apparition of French across the path was as startling 
as the descent of Montrose at Inverlochy, or of Stonewall 
Jackson at Manasses Junction. But Cronje was in 
overwhelming superiority, and it was only by the most 
audacious " bluff," by spreading his little force over a 
wide front and giving the impression of numbers that 
French was able to hold the enemy in check until the 
panting infantry under Kitchener came up from the 
east and sealed Cronje's fate. 

This incident disclosed qualities in French not less 
important than his brilliant daring — qualities which 
are proving invaluable in his present gigantic task. I 
refer to his unquestioning loyalty and his powers of 
endurance. Without them there would have been 
disaster in France. The co-operation of allies is always 
a delicate and perilous operation, and the relations of 
Sir John French and General Joffre were peculiarly 
susceptible to strain. French is not only a Field Marshal, 
and therefore Joffre's superior in rank, but he entered 
the war with a reputation established on the field of 
battle — a reputation second to none in Europe — while 
his chief had had no experience of war on a great scale. 
Nevertheless, the English commander has given the 
world an example of perfect loyalty, not merely in deed 
and word, but in spirit. And his endurance has been 
no less invaluable. It is not merely physical endurance. 
That, with his short, unromantic, but very serviceable 
figure, he possesses in an extraordinary degree. Weari- 
ness of body seems unknown to him. But even more 



SIR JOHN FRENCH 265 

important is his mental endurance. There is a touch 
of habitual depression in Kitchener, just a little sense 
of impending disaster. But French has the unconquer- 
able cheerfulness of the man who lives in the moment, 
bends all his faculties to the immediate task, and refuses 
to be terrorised by what is before or behind. It is not 
that he is without imagination. In the military sense 
he has abundance of that quality. It is that he is free 
from the temperamental moods of the artist and has 
that constancy of mind which is the first essential of 
the man of action. This quality was exhibited in a 
supreme degree in the first battle of Ypres. His 
generals came to him in despair. Their men had been 
fighting unceasingly for ten days and were at the last 
gasp. " Think of the enemy," he said, " they have 
been fighting unceasingly too and may be at their last 
gasp also. Hold on." And he was right. The next 
day the great thrust at Calais had coUapsed and the 
most momentous battle since Waterloo had ended in 
the victory of the British. 

It was this sense of stability and balance that marked 
him out for high command. The brilliant cavalry 
officer is not often a brilliant commander. His task 
is incidental rather than constructive, and his success 
comes from the impetuous rush of the spirit rather than 
from the steady glow of the mind. French's rare merit 
is that he combines the momentary inspiration of the 
cavalry leader with the power of surveying a large and 
complex situation from a detached point of view. In 
a word he has the power of thought as well as the instinct 
for action. This was shown in a very decisive way by 
the operations which he carried out in front of the 
Colesberg position. From the military point of view, 
those operations were the most conspicuous success of the 
war. It was in them that French found himself and the 



266 THE WAR LORDS 

military world discovered a leader of original power. 
During three months, by every art of finesse and " bluff," 
by skilful mystification, by caution that suddenly 
changed to audacity and audacity that changed to 
caution, by delicate calculations of time, of material 
values and of moral factors, he held in check a force often 
as much as five times greater than his own, a force, more- 
over, commanded by leaders of the high quality of 
Delarey and De Wet. It may be said that it was before 
Colesberg that French learned the art of generalship 
on the great scale and served his true apprenticeship 
for the most momentous task ever imposed upon a 
British General in the field. 

It was there that we first saw in operation that very 
rare combination of qualities which his unassuming 
personality contains — the steadiness of mind that sup- 
ported him under the tremendous strain of the retreat 
from Mons; the instinct for a military situation which 
led him to propose the transfer of the British Army from 
the Aisne to Flanders, a transfer that only just succeeded 
in defeating the lunge at Calais; the calculated daring 
that made him, when he arrived in Flanders, take the 
risk so brilliantly justified of spreading out his line to 
a perilous tenuity; the unfailing cheerfulness of one 
who, dismissing fears of the future or regrets for the past, 
Hves deHberately in the possibilities of the present, the 
untiring body and the constant, buU-dog purpose. 
Doubtless, he makes mistakes. There is an impression 
that he sometimes demands impossible things of his 
generals, as in the case of General Smith-Dorrien before 
Ypres; but the time has not come for a verdict upon 
these criticisms. 

The sense of loyalty which I have emphasised as one 
of the conspicuous traits of Sir John French's character 
is not confined to the professional sphere. His loyalty 



SIR JOHN FRENCH 267 

as a soldier has its counterpart in his loyalty to 
the civil authority. It is an open secret that had his 
opinion been followed there would have been short 
shrift with the potential rebels of the Curragh Camp. 
The final announcement that the soldier whose fine 
instinct of loyalty to constituted authority was the one 
redeeming feature of that unhappy business had found 
it impossible to reconcile honour with the withdrawal 
of his resignation seemed to leave the country face to 
face with an unprecedented danger. Only Mr. Asquith's 
dramatic assumption at that moment of the Secretary- 
ship of War saved the situation. 

That episode seemed like the unworthy eclipse of a 
distinguished career. In fact, it was only the end of his 
apprenticeship. Five months later Sir John French was 
saving the Hberties of Europe by a retreat that has few 
parallels in the history of war. When it was known that 
he was to command the Expeditionary Force there was no 
dissentient left in all the land. He was the obvious choice, 
and events have justified it. He has his defects, of 
course, the chief of which is a certain temperamental 
indolence. But his merits are great and, without any 
picturesque qualities, he has the supreme quality of 
always being adequate to the occasion. In this war he 
has been subjected to a test infinitely more severe and 
more searching than anything in the past. It would be 
strange if he had survived it without severe criticism 
in many directions. But at the end of all criticisms it 
is admitted by those whose knowledge is most intimate 
and whose judgment is best worth having that the 
question " Is there a better man ? " can only be answered 
in the negative. 



268 THE WAR LORDS 

SIR IAN HAMILTON 

It would not be easy to find a more striking contrast 
to Sir John French in externals than that furnished by 
the general who has been given the command of the 
Dardanelles expedition. Sir John French does not 
touch the imagination with any sense of romance. He is, 
Hke General Joifre, an entirely prosaic and matter-of- 
fact figure whose high merit is the possession of com.mon 
qualities in an uncommon degree and in that equilibrium 
which, if not genius, is in practical affairs often better 
than genius. He represents the business of war. Sir 
Ian Hamilton, on the other hand, suggests the romance 
of war. In temperament and appearance he is the 
cavalier, and a very little effort of the imagination is 
needed to picture him fighting a forlorn battle for the 
helpless Stuart cause. He is without the tragic serious- 
ness of Montrose, and without that depth and intensity 
that give Montrose so enduring a hold on the imagination; 
but it is the spirit of Montrose that he recalls in his 
mingling of the poet and the adventurer, and the distrust 
of him in service circles proceeds from the pedestrian 
fear that a man who looks so much like an embodiment 
of romance cannot at the same time possess the hum- 
drum qualities of the organiser of victory. 

The suspicion is natural. The plain man disapproves 
of wit in his politicians and of poetry in his soldiers. He 
hkes his men of affairs to talk in monosyllables and to 
preserve a dour and inflexible seriousness. Wellington 
was trusted all the more because he was so curt and said 
" Damn " with such vehemence, and the prestige of 
Joffre and Kitchener to-day is largely a tribute to their 
incomparable gift of silence. Now Sir Ian Hamilton 
has not only committed the fatal error of publishing 
poetry, but he carries in every lineament the impress of 



SIR IAN HAMILTON 269 

the poet and of the man of romantic ancestry and taste. 
He is the painter's soldier, and with his tall spare figure, 
his mobile, aristocratic features and dark eye gives the 
impression that his main function in life is to adorn the 
walls of the Royal Academy and then to die an heroic 
death on behalf of some mistaken loyalty, and with a 
cavalier jest upon his lips. And there is certainly no 
doubt that the natural instinct of the man is a chival- 
rous intrepidity rather than a calculating caution. The 
withered hand and wrist serve as a reminder of this, for 
they are a souvenir of that memorable day thirty years 
ago when the young heutenant of the 92nd Highlanders 
shared in the disaster on Majuba Hill, and when he gave 
the first conspicuous expression of the stuff that was 
in him. 

It was not the first occasion on which he had been 
under fire, for he had served in the Afghan War of 
1878-80 and had taken part in the operation at Cabul 
in 1879. ^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ occasion that discovered 
the spirit of the young Highlander. The day was going 
badly for the English and only desperate remedies could 
save it. In the duel of marksmanship the Boer farmers 
were easily superior, and Ian Hamilton, with the High- 
lander's passion for the charge surging in his veins, saw 
that the one hope was the bayonet. With the courage 
born of a vision denied to the unhappy commander, 
Hamilton approached Sir George CoUey. " Forgive my 
presumption, sir," he said, " but will you let the Gordon 
Highlanders charge with the bayonet ? " " No pre- 
sumption, young gentleman," replied CoUey. " We'U 
let them charge us : then we'll give them a volley 
and charge." It is not difiicult to conceive the feelings 
with which Ian Hamilton returned to his men, and wit- 
nessed the disaster which might have been averted by 
intrepidity and courage. 



270 THE WAR LORDS 

But his charge was to come nevertheless. Nearly 
twenty years had elapsed and once more the British 
were facing the Boers on a hill not far from the scene 
of the earlier exploit. It was January 6th, 1900, and 
on that day the fate of Ladysmith and of the British 
Army besieged there hung in the balance. It is charged 
against Hamilton that the peril that threatened from 
Waggon Hill had not been sufficiently guarded against. 
However that may be, in the darkness of that January 
morning the Boers stole up the sides of Waggon Hill, 
and on the crest of that hill, amid a thunderstorm of 
unusual intensity, there was waged a battle not less 
pregnant with results than that of Majuba, for had it 
been lost South Africa itself could hardly have been 
saved. Across the plateau the armies faced each other, 
firing at point-blank range, and often obscured by the 
torrential rain. As at Majuba the Boers had the advan- 
tage with the rifle, but on this occasion they had to deal 
with the young lieutenant, a lieutenant no longer, but 
a general with the power to put his faith in the bayonet 
into practice. For long the battle was in doubt, but 
then came the moment for which Ian Hamilton had 
waited, and the charge of the Devons swept the Boers 
from the hill and saved Ladysmith and its army. And 
though it was not the 92nd who had given him his 
revenge, there was to come a day later in that war when 
at Doornkop his favourite Gordons heard his order to 
charge, and passing amid a rain of bullets across the 
open veldt stormed with fixed bayonets the further slope, 
carried the position, and won as proud a victory as any 
in all their famous history. And that night, when the 
stars came out and the camp fires twinkled on the veldt, 
Ian Hamilton visited his old comrades of the regiment he 
was born in and thanked them for the gallantry that 
would ring through faraway Scotland on the following day. 



SIR IAN HAMILTON 271 

But though he has the Highlander's love of the charge, 
it would be a mistake to regard him simply as a brilliant 
adventurer of the battlefield. He is that, but he is more 
than that. When Lord Roberts, not long before his 
death, was asked whom among the generals of the British 
Army he regarded as the ablest commander in the field, 
he replied, " Ian Hamilton." The judgment was dis- 
putable, but not indefensible, and it was founded not 
on Hamilton's audacity, but on his knowledge and on 
his coolness in directing the complex movements of the 
battlefield. He has, Hke General French, been a serious 
student of war all his Hfe. He comes of a soldier strain, 
for his father once commanded the 92nd Highlanders 
and an ancestor of his was aide-de-camp to the great 
Marlborough, and his natural aptitude for war has been 
cultivated not merely by experience in the field, but by 
familiarity with continental methods. As a youth he 
went to Germany and from the old Hanoverian, General 
Dammers, acquired the strategy that had made the 
Prussians the military masters of Europe. And since 
then he has learned to apply and qualify that science by 
the actual experience of war in many fields — in India, 
in Egypt, in South Africa. 

He has not the imperturbable quality of Sir John 
French, for his temperament is that of the artist, and he 
once confessed, half jestingly but with a certain serious- 
ness, that he had " never gone into battle without 
being in a blue funk and wondering how on earth he 
was to get through." But that element of nervous 
tension is often the most dangerous in action. It 
means intellectual speed and passion, and when that 
motion is controlled by a cool head we have the ele- 
ments of a great general. The operations in Gallipoli 
are as formidable as any that a mihtary commander 
has ever had to face. They call for daring, for swift 



272 THE WAR LORDS 

inspiration, but they call also for caution and calm 
judgment. On the first gate of Busyrane there was in- 
scribed the words "Be bold;" on the second, "Be 
bold and ever more be bold; " on the third, " Be not too 
bold." They are the invisible inscriptions on the gates 
of the Dardanelles. Time will show whether Sir Ian 
Hamilton has the vision to see them and understand 
their mingled warning and challenge. 



SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON 

One other type of British generalship calls for remark. 
In many respects the most significant figure in the 
British Army to-day is General Sir William Robertson. 
He is a man of whom the public hears little, but for sheer 
intellectual force he has perhaps no rival. The measure 
of his capacity may be understood from the fact that he 
is a " ranker." It is long since Gladstone abolished pur- 
chase in the army; but the abolition of purchase did 
not mean the democratising of the commands. It only 
meant that it was possible for a man of brains to secure 
a commission when it was too late for his talents to win 
a field for their exercise. The officering of the British 
Army was still an aristocratic prerogative, safeguarded 
by the conditions of the service. General Robertson, 
it is true, is not the first " ranker " to attain the rank of 
general. Hector Macdonald was also a " ranker," but 
the qualities that brought that tragic hero to greatness 
were the qualities of the fighting man. The remark- 
able fact about General Robertson is that he has won 
his way to distinction by the qualities of his mind. He 
has brought into the Army the rare element of abstract 
thinking — that learning of which we in the past have 
had too little and the Germans apparently too much. 



SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON 273 

That he is a gallant soldier goes without saying, for 
although born in Lincolnshire, he comes of that fighting 
stock, the Clan Chattan, memorable to every reader of 
Scott. And he has seen active service in India and in 
South Africa and was wounded in Chitral. But it is 
in the lecture room and the study and not in the field 
that the man who enlisted in the i6th Lancers nearly 
forty years ago has won his unique distinction. He 
discovered a genius for languages, including Indian 
dialects, and this paved his way to notice. And once 
he had got his foot on the ladder his progress was 
irresistible, for he revealed an understanding of the 
science of war that impressed all who came in contact 
with him, and his ultimate appointment as Commandant 
of the Staff College at Camberley gave the Army the 
rare experience of an incomparable lecturer. To-day 
there is no officer in the British Army who is Hstened to 
in the lecture room with such respect as the former 
private of the i6th Lancers. As Chief of the Staff to 
Sir John French he is in his true place as the scientific 
adviser and thinker of the campaign — a plain, unassum- 
ing soldier, sparing of words, direct of eye, his Scotch 
caution touched with kindliness, his whole manner that 
of one in whom truth of vision is allied to vigour of 
understanding. 



SIR JOHN JELLICOE 

When describing the birth of the all-big-gun ship and 
the opposition it had to meet, Sir John Fisher used to 
say: " I took care that my committee of experts who 
had to give their judgment on the idea should not 
consist of men whose day was done, but of the young 
men who had the rope round their neck, of the men who 
would have to walk the plank themselves for every 
mistake they made." 

Among those men he did not fail to include Captain 
Jellicoe, for not the least conspicuous quality of the 
First Sea Lord is his power of personal valuation. The 
all-embracing glance of that full, small-pupilled eye, at 
once so ruthless and so genial, picks men out with a swift 
decisiveness from which there is no appeal. In this man 
he discerns strength; in that man, weakness. He takes 
the one — for the other he has no use, though his coat 
of arms have half the quarterings of Debrett. It is not 
only the revolution he worked in the material, the dis- 
position, the equipment, the strategy of the Navy that 
is Lord Fisher's claim to distinction; hardly less impor- 
tant was his influence on the personnel of the service. 
He modernised the ship, but he also modernised the 
officer. He found the Navy in the grip of a hoary 
tradition; he brought it under the inspiration of an 
alert and living intelligence. 

And among the instruments of his aims, no one had 
been more trusted or more prominent than the Admiral 
who is charged with the most momentous task that has 
fallen to the lot of any sailor in our annals. It is a 

quarter of a century since Captain Fisher's roving eye 

274 




a/-A^»/ ^^-^-t^-^-^K- 



SIR JOHN JELLICOE 275 

picked him out. Lord Ripon had discovered Fisher 
four or five years before, and had made him Director 
of Ordnance, and it was with Captain JeUicoe as his 
assistant in this department that the association began 
of the two great seamen whom history will Hnk together 
as it links St. Vincent and Nelson — for it was St. Vincent's 
reforms that made Trafalgar possible. 

But it required no exceptional gifts of intuition to 
discover Jellicoe. There is that about this small alert 
man, with the clear, frank eye, the tight-hpped mouth 
that falls away in lines which seem equally ready to 
harden with decision or soften with good humour, that 
commands attention. His face, in Stevenson's phrase, 
is a certificate. It suggests a spacious, mobile under- 
standing, breadth of judgment, and large reserves of 
patience, good humour, confidence. He is not formid- 
able with the thunderous gloom of Lord Kitchener or 
the sardonic Hghtnings of Lord Fisher. There is about 
him much more of the quality of Sir John French, the 
quaHty of the plain man, human and friendly in his 
attitude to the world, but with his emotions under the 
control of a firm will; wholly free from vanity or 
eccentricity, seeing things with a large simplicity and 
comprehension, governed not by temperamental moods 
or inspirations that may be false, but by the calculations 
of an acute, dispassionate, singularly serene mind. He 
carries with him what one may call the candour of the 
sea, that feeling of a certain elemental directness and 
veracity common to men who spend their Hves far from 
towns, under a wide sky and in companionship with the 
great natural forces that do not lie and that cannot be 
deceived. 

Here, you feel, is one who has cleared his mind of 
illusions, who gives you the truth and demands the 
truth. He will have no pleasant falsities. " Things 



276 THE WAR LORDS 

and actions," he seems to say with another famous 
man, " are what they are, and their consequences will 
be what they will be. Why, therefore, should we desire 
to be deceived ? " 

This foundation note of veracity is illustrated by an 
incident which occurred during the ill-fated expedition 
of Admiral Seymour, which went at the urgent summons 
of Sir Claude MacDonald to relieve Peking at the time 
of the Boxer riots in 1900. In that expedition, which, 
though it represented eight nations, only consisted of a 
little more than 2000 men. Captain Jellicoe, the Admiral's 
Flag Captain, acted as Chief of Staff, and at the battle 
of Peitsang he was wounded so dangerously that the 
doctor of the flagship despaired of his hfe. While he 
lay in this condition, he sent for a fellow officer, who has 
told in the Pall Mall Gazette what followed : 

" I went down immediate^, and found him suffering severe pain 
from his wound, pain made the worse by the utter misery of the sur- 
roundings and by the uncertainty of ever5rthing. He wanted to know 
what I thought of things. Foolishly, perhaps, I tried to make the best 
of them, and told him that I thought we were doing very weU, and 
that there was no doubt at aU of our ability to cut our way back to 
Tientsin or even to the coast, supposing the foreign settlement to have 
fallen. I do not think I shall ever forget the contemptuous flash of the 
eyes he turned on me, or the impatient remark: ' TeU me the truth; 
don't he! '" 

This passion for the naked truth is not merely the 
instinct of a fundamentally honest man. It is not 
uncommon to find a flawless veracity associated with 
extreme dulness and a fatal bigotry. But Admiral 
JeUicoe's respect for truth is intellectual as well as moral. 
It is an expression of those rare mental gifts which have 
made him a marked man in the Navy from the time 
when, as a cadet, he came out of the Britannia the first 
of his year by an unusual percentage of marks and the 
winner of all the prizes. This preliminary evidence of 



SIR JOHN JELLICOE 277 

his gifts of mind was- sustained at every subsequent 
test — by taking three first-class certificates in his 
examination for sub-lieutenant, and by winning the 
prize of ^80 for gunnery at the Royal Naval College. 

The last-mentioned achievement was prophetic. In 
the great scheme of modernising the Navy, which Lord 
Fisher completed so opportunely, it will be said that the 
most important phases were the changes in disposition, 
in strategy, and in construction. And yet, truly seen, 
it might be said that these things were but means to an 
end. Ships, after all, are only gun carriages. It is the 
gun and its use for which everything else is a prepara- 
tion. And it is the revolution in guns and gunnery that 
is the key of the supremacy that means so much to us 
to-day. 

In that revolution three men have been primarily 
concerned. Lord Fisher, with that instinct for the 
centre of things which never fails him, began his career 
by writing on gunnery. Sir Percy Scott made the all- 
big-gun ship possible by his invention of the central fire 
control system. Sir John JeUicoe completed the trium- 
virate. He was Director of Naval Ordnance at the 
critical moment. He was already known as one of the 
greatest gunnery experts in the Navy owing to his 
achievements while in command of the Drake, and Sir 
John Fisher brought him to the Ordnance Department 
when his plans were ripe for the great transition to the 
Dreadnought era. It was the sympathy, understanding, 
and enthusiasm which Captain JeUicoe gave to Sir Percy 
Scott that made the work of that original and inventive 
mind effective. 

Nor did he give sympathy and enthusiasm only. He 
brought to the task original thought and an activity of 
mind that worked an unparalleled reform in the gunnery 
equipment and efficiency of the Navy. Within a year 



278 THE WAR LORDS 

of his appointment as Director of Ordnance, he had 
raised the percentage of hits out of rounds fired from 
42 to over 70. In other words, he had increased by- 
more than a third the fighting value of the British Navy, 
and that without a keel being added to its composition. 

It is a favourite, half-jocular, half-serious, saying 
of Lord Fisher's, as he points to this or that fact that 
has worked to the advantage of this country : " Didn't 
I say that we are the Lost Tribes of the chosen people ? " 
One can imagine him pointing to Admiral Jellicoe as a 
proof of his theory. For if any one might claim to have 
been preserved by an invisible hand for great ends, it 
is the Admiral who, perhaps more than any other single 
man, has the destiny of the world in his keeping to-day. 

Thrice he has escaped death when death seemed to 
have him fast — in China, as I have indicated; off 
Gibraltar, in 1886, when he commanded a gig, manned 
by volunteers, that went to the rescue of the crew of a 
steamer stranded on a sandbank, and when the gig 
capsized in the heavy seas and he was washed ashore; 
most conspicuously in the Mediterranean, in 1893, on 
the day when Sir George Tryon sent his flagship Victoria 
to its doom. Jellicoe was the commander of the flagship. 

It is not necessary here to recall the facts of that 
terrible disaster. Tryon's mistake is for ever inexphcable. 
What we know is that Captain Bourke did his utmost to 
counter the Admiral's fatal order. Had the commander 
been present to reinforce his objections, perhaps the 
calamity would have been avoided. 

But the commander was not present. " He, poor 
feUow, was below and in bed from fever," said Admiral 
Sir G. Phipps Hornby, in his article on the disaster in 
the Fortnightly. " He was called to get up before the 
ship sank. He got up; but, instead of going up to 
save himself, he went below to hurry up any one who 



SIR JOHN JELLICOE 279 

might be there. When the ship foundered, he came to 
the surface necessarily in a state of exhaustion. For- 
tunately, a midshipman helped and supported him." 

That midshipman certainly deserves a memorable 
place among the instruments of fate. For it is doubtful 
whether any hfe more necessary, not to this country 
only, but to the world, was ever snatched from the jaws 
of death. How necessary we only fully understood 
twenty-one years later, in the tremendous hour when the 
nation realised that the Fleet alone stood between it 
and annihilation. 

It would be unjust to suggest that there was no other 
admiral adequate to the task, but it is just and true to 
say that there was no other admiral so indisputably 
and variously equipped for the task. Sir A. K. Wilson 
is doubtless a more profound strategist, a greater 
abstract thinker. But he had passed out of the active 
service, and, moreover, he had nothing of the versatiHty 
of the younger man. He hated the administrative side 
of the service, and would suggest, with the exquisite 
modesty that made him so delightful, that this or that 
department had never had a more incompetent head than 
he had been. 

Now Sir John JeUicoe has that rapid and adaptable 
type of mind that is at home in all tasks, that is at once 
comprehensive and minute, happy in thought and in 
action, at the desk or on the quarter-deck. Doubtless 
he had special aptitude for the sea, due to the tradition 
of a sea-going family. For not only is he the son of a 
sailor, his father, Captain John H. JeUicoe, having been 
for many years Commodore of the fleet of the R.M.S.P.; 
but another of his kin was that Admiral Philip Patton 
who was Second Sea Lord at the time of Trafalgar. But 
you feel that so vigorous and agile an intellect would 
have achieved success in any calling, and that it is only 



28o THE WAR LORDS 

an accident that made him a great seaman instead of a 
great engineer or a briUiant lawyer. He had run through 
the whole gamut of the Navy with a swift apprehension 
of the parts and the whole, and at fifty-five embodied 
more than any one, except his chief, the spirit, practice, 
and thought of the modern navy. 

It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance 
of this fact. The modern navy is the most gigantic 
speculation in history. All the axioms of the past have 
been reversed or vitiated. Steam and steel, guns and 
explosives, torpedoes and submarines, mines and aero- 
planes, have changed the whole character of the prob- 
lems of sea warfare. Its theories are based not upon 
experience, but upon thought; so much so that even 
at this moment no man can say whether the little sub- 
marine has not made the great modern battleship as 
obsolete as Nelson's Victory. 

In these circumstances, the supreme need at the helm 
was a mind wedded to no antiquated assumptions, 
familiar with all the incalculable factors, quick to seize 
the meaning of every fact and to correlate it with the 
strategic and tactical requirements — in short, a mind, 
mobile, modern, unprejudiced, which faced the un- 
known with the keenest vision, the most instructed 
judgment, and the readiest accessibility to ideas. In 
all this Sir John Jellicoe was without a rival. 

In the mind of one masterful man he had for years 
been marked out as Admiralissimo when the time 
came, and the way that masterful mind cleared the 
obstacles from the path of this man of genius but smaU 
social influence will one day make a fascinating page 
in the history of the Navy and of the war. 

The conclusive proof of his fitness for the immense 
burden imposed upon him came, fortunately, on the 
eve of the struggle. He commanded the Red Fleet 



SIR JOHN JELLICOE 281 

during the manoeuvres of 191 3. They were carried out 
in strict secrecy, but it is known in service circles that 
the result was something much more than a victory for 
Admiral Jellicoe. 

It was a victory not merely brilHant, but charged 
with a significance that can only be described as start- 
Hng. When it was over, it left this man of the pleasant, 
alert manner, the clear, terse speech, and the direct 
yet kindly eye, the indisputable choice when the day 
came that was to bring all the speculations of WhitehaU 
to the test of battle. 

In that ordeal many doctrines will be found to be effete, 
many calculations will prove unsound, many truths will 
turn out to be falsities. But there are two certainties 
that will survive all tests — the gallantry of the men and 
the genius of their commander. 



KARL LIEBKNECHT 

AND THE GERMAN DEMOCkACY 

There have been many iron crosses distributed in 
Germany since August last. They have doubtless been 
given to brave men for brave deeds. But the bravest 
man in Germany has had no iron cross, and if he has 
escaped the martyr's cross it is only because the govern- 
ment dare not risk the consequences. For Karl Lieb- 
knecht might be even more dangerous dead than ahve. 
The news of his execution' or even of his imprisonment 
would be as disastrous to the Kaiser as the loss of a 
pitched battle. It would send through the trenches 
a chill reminder of that other war that is temporarily 
suspended — the war for the liberties of the Prussian 
people. 

For there are two kings in Potsdam. There is the 
Kaiser who reviews his legions on the parade ground 
before the Old Palace and there is Karl Liebknecht who 
gathers his legions in the streets. His election to the 
Reichstag as the Socialist representative of the Kaiser's 
own borough in 191 2 was the most bitter insult the 
Kaiser ever received from his people. It was as though 
Windsor had returned a Republican to Parliament. 
The Kaiser's sons ostentatiously led the way to the 
poUing booth in the early morning, but at night the 
people of Potsdam had elected old Wilhelm Liebknecht's 
son as their democratic king. 

There has been much scornful criticism of the docility 

with which the German Socialists have answered the 

282 



KARL LIEBKNECHT 283 

call of the Prussian drill sergeant. See what nonsense 
this Socialism is, it is said. See how it all vanishes into 
thin air at the sound of the trumpet. And see what an 
admirable institution is that Prussian drill sergeant. 
Oh, for a drill sergeant Hke him in England, a drill 
sergeant who at the word of command can bring the 
whole working class to heel and make them the obedient 
instruments of a triumphant aristocracy. " Yes," said 
Carlyle long ago, " the idea of a pig-headed soldier who 
will obey orders and fire on his own father at the com- 
mand of an officer is a great comfort to the aristocratic 
mind." 

And it must be admitted that there is ground for 
this comfortable conviction of the value of militarism 
as a strait-waistcoat for an insurgent democracy. The 
obedience with which the German Sociahsts, after 
marching for generations to the polls against the Prussian 
junkers and their mihtary machine, fell into step behind 
the junkers at the call of the bugle seems to reduce all 
their agitations and theories to idle wind. It encour- 
ages writers like the enigmatic Dr. Dillon to say, as he 
says in the Contemporary Review, that there is nothing 
to choose between the government and the people. But 
that is to take a shallow view of the facts. The storm 
fell upon the Socialists of Germany as suddenly as upon 
us. They knew less of the causes of that storm than we 
knew. They saw only one thing, as we did, that their 
country was in danger ; and they resolved, as we did, to 
subordinate everything to the instant duty of saving 
it from ruin. 

We can illustrate the position with a parable. You 
may quarrel very heartily with your family about the 
internal economy of your house; but if the house is in 
flames you will pretermit those quarrels and join forces 
to put out the flames. You may suspect that the fire 



284 THE WAR LORDS 

is due to the mischievous stove arrangements against 
which you have waged a vain struggle; but that will 
not make you less eager to quench the fire. When it is 
quenched you will have no more nonsense about that 
stove; but for the moment you are in another realm of 
ideas and on another plane of action. 

The isolation of Karl Liebknecht, therefore, is more 
apparent than real. Millions of people in Germany are 
thinking his thoughts, and though he alone is uttering 
them to-day, they will be the governing thoughts of 
Germany to-morrow. The fact that he is free to utter 
them is in itself a portent. It is the most decisive 
evidence of the power of that other motif that runs 
through the German nation counter to the triumphant 
motif of Bernhardism just as in the great imagery of 
Tannhduser the Pilgrims' Chorus runs counter to the 
sensuous flood of the Venusberg music. We have for- 
gotten that other motif. We see Germany only by the 
torch of Bernhardi. It could not be otherwise. In the 
fierce stress of battle we have no time to discriminate, 
and we brand the whole German nation with the scarlet 
letter. We know it is false ; we know that Burke's great 
saying about the indictment of a nation is as true of 
Germany as of any other people ; but for the moment we 
are living under the dominion of a tyrannic passion 
which repudiates the reason almost as though it were a 
traitor. I confess that, with every desire to be sensible, 
I am a little unhappy when I find that the barber or the 
waiter into whose hands I may have fallen addresses me 
in the accents of Germany. I know the poor wretch is 
as innocent of this great crime as I am, I know that his 
life in these days must be a hell — and yet . . . well, I 
wish I had fallen into other hands. And so with the 
music of Germany. Even that intimate speech of 
Schumann — the most brotherly and tender language in 



KARL LIEBKNECHT 285 

all the realm of art — seems like the speech of one with 
whom there is a tragic estrangement. 

But the other motif will return and even through the 
discords of war we may hear it like an undertone. The 
" Eye Witness " tells us of the German officer who, even 
in captivity, preserves his insolent bearing. He is the 
symbol of the Germany we are fighting, and that we are 
going to beat. But Liebknecht is the symbol of the 
Germany with whom we are going to be reconciled. He 
stands there, the bravest man in Europe at this moment, 
challenging and resisting the whole current of the war. 
And, as I have said, the significant thing is that he is 
still free. It was different in 1870 when his father, 
Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the founders of German 
Social Democracy, was clapped in prison together with 
Bebel for resisting in the Reichstag the proposal to 
annex Alsace-Lorraine. Karl has gone much further 
than his father went. It was he who, when the German 
Press was fanning the flame of hatred against the Bel- 
gians by stories of atrocities committed against the 
German soldiers, hunted the stories to their source in 
hospitals and elsewhere, proved them to be baseless and 
denounced them as such in Vorwaerts. 

But it is in his resistance to the war itself that Dr. 
Liebknecht has revealed his true mettle. While those 
of his fellow Socialists who opposed the war walked out 
of the Reichstag when the war credits were voted on 
December 2, he remained to utter his protest. The 
President would not allow him to speak, and when he 
handed in his speech in writing the President refused to 
insert it in the records. But the speech remains and 
reading it we cannot wonder that the Kaiser dare not 
let his people see it. For it denounces the war as 
having been " prepared by the German and Austrian 
war parties, acting together in the darkness of half- 



286 THE WAR LORDS 

absolutism and secret diplomacy, with the intention of 
getting ahead of their adversaries." The cry against 
" Tsarism " was an imposture. " Germany, the partner 
of Tsarism, the most conspicuous example of political 
reaction, has no mission as a liberator of nations. The 
hberation of the Russian and German people must be 
the work of themselves." His conclusion will stand as 
one of the most famous indictments in history. 

" Under protest against the war; against those who are responsible 
for it and have caused it; against the capitaUstic purposes for which 
it is being waged; against the plans of annexation; against the viola- 
tion of the neutrahty of Belgium and Luxemburg; against the absolute 
reign of the rights of war; against the social and political violation of 
their clear duty of which the Government and the ruling classes stand 
guilty, I shall vote agaiast the war credits asked for." 

No less remarkable was his speech in the Prussian 
Diet in March, when the bureaucracy revealed " the 
naked truth that in Prussia everything remains as 
before." The war had opened with the promise that 
the infamous property suffrage in Prussia should be 
aboHshed ; but with the soldiers securely in the trenches 
the ohgarchy had repudiated the promise. The people 
were to die, but they were to have no reward. They 
were to Hberate the Russians from Tsarism, but they 
were to remain political slaves themselves— slaves to 
the trinity of Mihtarism, Monarchy, and Property. This 
time Liebknecht was permitted to speak, but the Diet 
fled at his rising. They dared not stay to hear him tell 
how " our soldiers will clench their fists in the trenches " 
as they hear of their betrayal. 

The magnitude of that betrayal can hardly be exagger- 
ated. Prussia is a despotism. The three-class suffrage 
so effectually excludes the people from representation 
that in the whole Diet there are only seven Socialists. 
Add to this the fact that the government is responsible 



KARL LIEBKNECHT 287 

not to Parliament but to the Kaiser and it will be seen 
how completely divorced the people are from the affairs 
of Government. And yet our Dr. Dillons tell us there 
is nothing to choose between the people and the tyranny 
which enslaves them. 

If this were true we might indeed despair. But it 
is not true. Vorwaerts knew it was not true when it 
courageously declared — for it had already been several 
times suppressed — that " democratic control by the 
people would have prevented the war." It is the 
crowned King of Potsdam, not the uncrowned King of 
Potsdam with whom we are at death grips, and until 
we appreciate that fact we shall not understand what 
this war is really about. It is not a war between this 
country and that, this people and that, this race and 
that, but between this ideal and that — between the ideal 
of despotism and the ideal of freedom — between absolu- 
tism and democracy, between imperialism and national 
hberty. The parties to the quarrel have got so curiously 
mixed that this truth is a Httle difficult to see and some- 
times even a little hard to beHeve. But it is the truth 
all the same, and in that truth is the one gleam of hope 
in the vast tragedy. 

We cannot surrender that hope of an ultimate recon- 
ciliation of the democracies, for without it human life 
on this planet would be poisoned for ever. It is true 
that at this moment, when we are under the shadow of 
that enormous crime of the Lusitania, it is difficult to 
imagine that we can ever again be on terms with the 
German people. And if that crime were their crime we 
could not be. But it is the crime of a system, not of a 
people. Even on the battlefield and at sea there have 
been glimpses that the men are better than the devilish 
doctrine that employs them as its instruments. Has 
there been anything in the history of war more moving 



288 THE WAR LORDS 

than those scenes in the trenches on Christmas Day? 
And the course of the struggle has been full of incidents 
of a similar kind, often trivial but often eloquent of the 
mutual goodwill that cannot be entirely stifled even by 
the sulphurous atmosphere of war. The English people 
have been quickly responsive to such episodes, as in the 
case of Captain von Miiller of the Emden. The reason 
is simple. There is no atmosphere so intolerable, so 
desolating as that of hate. The healthy mind hates in 
spasms, but it lives by its affections. The man who is 
consumed by hate is not only a misery to himself, but 
a source of misery to all around him, not because of the 
menace he offers to our interests but because he defiles 
the atmosphere we breathe and debases the currency 
of our kind. We would give anything to see one spark 
of gladness leap from his thundercloud. And it is 
because Captain von Miiller is a spark of gladness from 
the thundercloud of Germany that we made much of 
him. He has fought without hate and without bitter- 
ness, with chivalry and good temper, and he has shown 
that it is possible still to be both a brave man and a 
gentleman. 

Now there is a conviction in some minds, and nowhefe 
more than in intellectual Germany, that in order to 
defeat your foe you must first hate him. I do not know 
whether the Kaiser's order about destroying " the con- 
temptible little army " was authentic. It has been 
repeatedly denied and may be an invention. But there 
is no doubt about the stream of vitriol that flows from 
high places in Germany apparently to put fire into the 
hearts of the soldiers. The crude and vulgar appeal of 
the Crown Prince of Bavaria to his men is an example, 
and so also is the speech of Professor Sombart in which 
he has explained how profound, eternal, and universal 
is the hatred of the German for England and the English. 



KARL LIEBKNECHT 289 

It burns, he says, in the whole German people from the 
taxi-driver to the prince. It is spontaneous, elemental, 
rooted in the deepest depths of the German being — 
with much more frenzied nonsense of the same sort. 

In his sane moments he probably knows that there 
are no such things as eternal hatreds between nations, 
or hatreds rooted in elemental antagonisms. The con- 
flicts between peoples proceed from conflicts between 
kings and chancelleries. Kant in his Perpetual Peace 
said that that ideal could never be attained until the 
world had got rid of thrones and was organised on a 
democratic basis. And, though the dynastic war belongs 
to the past, the truth of that maxim is as unassailable 
to-day as when Kant uttered it. 

We have but to contrast the Republican United 
States with Germany, or the Republican France to-day 
with the France of the Second Empire to understand 
that it is not democracies who cherish eternal hates that 
flame into war, but ambitious rulers and incompetent 
ministers who blunder into war for their own schemes. 
Napoleon III. was hardly less criminally wrong than 
Bismarck in 1870 or than the Kaiser is to-day. 

We are asked to believe that there is an eternal feud 
between Slav and Teuton, yet we all know that the 
conflict between Russia and Germany is a diplomatic 
conflict, and that if the lifelong policy of Bismarck had 
not been repudiated there would have been no collision 
with Russia. We ourselves have passed through the 
whole gamut of European alliances. We have fought 
against France and with France, against Russia and with 
Russia, against Prussia and with Prussia, against Spain 
and with Spain, against the Turk and with the Turk. 
What had undying national hates or loves to do with 
these things ? They were transient political creations, 
not imperishable racial tendencies. Hate is a personal 



290 THE WAR LORDS 

thing and that is why there can be no enduring peace 
in a world which is subject to personal rule. Nations 
are not antagonistic but complementary. That is why 
Free Trade is a spiritual influence as well as an economic 
theory. It is a material expression of the religion of 
humanity. 

It is significant that these appeals to hate usually 
come from bookish persons, and especially from the 
professors who are so largely responsible for the philo- 
sophy that has driven Germany to madness. When- 
ever we come down to the authentic word of the soldier 
himself we find that it breathes none of the ferocity that 
issues from the professor who sees war only in the 
abstract and nations as pawns on his philosophical chess- 
board. The private soldier is merciless in battle. " I 
stuck a German through the body and shot a lot more," 
says a private of the London Scottish, writing to his 
parents about the famous charge. But he was only 
doing his duty. In normal conditions he would prob- 
ably walk round a worm rather than tread on it, but 
now he has surrendered his conscience to his country, 
and does the task imposed on him without flinching, 
though that task in other circumstances would be called 
murder. 

The point, however, is that he does his slaying with- 
out hate. Indeed, how should he hate ? He hes 
with his fellows in the trench all day, waiting to shoot 
men who are lying in a trench a hundred yards away, 
and who are waiting to shoot him. He has never seen 
them before. He does not know their names or speak 
their language. All that he knows is that it is his busi- 
ness to kill them, just as it is their business to kill him. 
He is sorry for himself, and perhaps a little sorry for 
them, but duty is duty, and he does it. And if he 
charges he charges with the passion of victory, but not 



KARL LIEBKNECHT 291 

with the motive of hate. He no more hates the man he 
runs through than he hates the man from whom he takes 
the ball on the football field. 

This gospel of hate as the instrument of victory in 
battle, indeed, is not the soldier's gospel at all, but the 
scholar's gospel and not seldom the gospel of the cleric. 
Perhaps it is hardly fair to quote General Lee as typical 
of the soldier, for he was not only one of the greatest 
generals but also one of the most saintly men who ever 
lived. But he represented the soldier's spirit, and his 
comments on hatred in war are true to the profession 
he adorned. When a minister in the course of his ser- 
mon had expressed himself rather bitterly as to the con- 
duct of the North, Lee said to him, " Doctor, there is a 
good old book which says * Love your enemies.' . . . 
Do you think that your remarks this evening were quite 
in the spirit of that teaching ? " On another occasion 
when one of his generals exclaimed of the enemy, " I wish 
these people were all dead," Lee answered, " How can 
you say so ? Now I wish they were aU at home attend- 
ing to their own business and leaving us to do the same." 
And he stated his feeling generally when he said, " I 
have fought against the people of the North, because 
I beUeved they were seeking to wrest from the South 
dearest rights. But I have never cherished bitter or 
vindictive feeHngs and have never seen the day when 
I did not pray for them." 

That is the spirit of the great general and it is the 
spirit of Carlyle's peasant of Dumdrudge. We may 
be sure that it is the spirit that pervades the battle that 
is raging so near to us day and night as we go about our 
business. And perhaps hardly less on the German side 
than our own. It was a German officer who wrote the 
most impressive protest that has appeared against the 
gospel of hate that is preached by professors and editors 



292 THE WAR LORDS 

for the encouragement of soldiers. The letter which 
appeared in the Cologne Gazette deserves to be remem- 
bered in the history of the war for its note of dignity 
and sadness. 

" Perhaps you will be so good as to assist, by the publication of 
these lines, in freeing our troops from an evil which they feel very 
strongly. I have on many occasions, when distributing among the 
men the postal packets, observed among them postcards on which the 
defeated French, Enghsh, and Russians were derided in a tasteless 
fashion. 

" The impression made by these postcards on our men is highly 
noteworthy. Scarcely anybody is pleased with these postcards; on 
the contrary, every one expresses his displeasure. 

" This is quite natural when one considers the position. We know 
how victories are won. We also know by what tremendous sacrifices 
they are obtained. We see with our own eyes the unspeakable misery 
of the battlefield. We rejoice over our victories, but our joy is damped 
by the recoUection of the sad pictures which we observe almost daily. 

" And our enemies have, in an overwhelming majority of cases, 
truly not deserved to be derided in such a way. Had they not fought 
so bravely we would not have had to register such losses. 

" Insipid, therefore, as these postcards are in themselves, their 
efiect here, on the battlefields, in face of our dead and wounded, is only 
calculated to cause disgust. Such postcards are as much out of place 
in the battlefield as a clown is at a funeral. Perhaps these lines may 
prove instrumental in decreasing the number of such postcards sent 
to our troops." 

That is not the spirit of hate; it is the spirit of true 
humanity. I think we should all Hke to feel that it 
reflects the soul of Germany and that the infamies that 
have made the blood of the world run cold are not the 
infamies of a people, but of a system. In any case we 
shall not answer infamy with infamy. " It makes one 
angry," said a distinguished clergyman to me, " to hear 
Churchill talking of fighting this war like gentlemen. 
How can we fight such a foe in a gentlemanly way ? " 
The primeval instinct of revenge is strong in all of us. 
We cannot read the story of Louvain, of Aerschot, of 



KARL LIEBKNECHT 293 

Roulers, of Senlis, of Dinant without feeling it boil 
within us. We want an eye for an eye and a tooth for 
a tooth. We want to see their towns in ruins and their 
people driven into beggary as they have driven the 
Belgians. We feel that crimes like theirs can only be 
wiped out by crimes as vast, that suffering such as they 
have inflicted can only be paid in suffering. 

And yet, if this struggle has one meaning more pro- 
found than any other it is this, that we are waging a war 
of civilisation against barbarism — a barbarism which 
is only more hateful because, in M. Cambon's phrase, 
it is " pedantic barbarism." Germany's crime is not to 
be measured by the visible wrong. It is a crime against 
the soul of the world. She has shamed humanity. She 
has outraged the sanctities which are the common 
heritage of all of us and has made the civilisation that 
men have won from the ages a hideous jest. We have 
to repair that wrong and to reaffirm the reign of law 
among men. But we shall not do it with the methods 
of barbarism against which we war. The punishment 
that is inflicted shall be adequate to the enormity of the 
crime, but it shall be the punishment of justice and not 
of revenge or hate. 

The best hope of the recovery of the world from the 
wounds of this war is in the deliverance of the German 
people from Kaiserism, and that hope can best be 
measured by the significance of Karl Liebknecht. There 
are some people who see in him only a negligible figure, 
the equivalent of those who oppose the war in this 
country. But that is to ignore the fact that we live 
under a democratic system and are fighting for the 
existence of democracy, while Liebknecht lives under a 
despotism which is fighting for the maintenance and 
extension of despotism. If it were true that there is 
nothing to choose in this war between the ideal of this 



294 THE WAR LORDS 

country and the ideal of Germany, there would be ground 
for the suggestion that Liebknecht is only a perverse 
person. But who will say that that is true ? Who will 
say that it means nothing to the world whether Germany 
or the Allies win ? Liebknecht knows that it means 
everything and he would rather see Germany redeemed 
by defeat than Kaiserism enthroned over the earth. 
There are others who say that Liebknecht's opposition 
is in some subtle way that they do not explain a pawn 
in the German game. If it were not so, they say, some 
means would have been found of suppressing him. But 
those who see in him a tool of the Kaiser know little of 
the man or of his career, and the fact that he is at liberty 
is the most conclusive proof of his influence even in the 
midst of the war. 

For if the Government thought they could risk im- 
prisoning him he would have disappeared long ago. It 
would not be the first time that they had had him under 
lock and key. He made his reputation as a barrister 
in 1905 by his defence in the famous Konigsberg trial 
of the German Socialists charged with conspiracy on 
behalf of the Russian revolutionists and he followed this 
up with a fierce anti-militarist propaganda. For, hke 
Bebel, he knew that no good would be done with Prussia 
until the military fetish was destroyed and with the 
true instinct of the reformer he aimed at the heart 
of the tyranny. His reward was eighteen months' 
imprisonment. 

But they could not suppress a man Hke Karl Lieb- 
knecht by putting him in prison any more than they 
could suppress his father in that way. When he came 
out Berlin celebrated the fact by electing him to the 
holy of holies of junkerdom, the Diet itself. And since 
then, and especially since his election at Potsdam to 
the Reichstag, his power has increased. With the 



KARL LIEBKNECHT 295 

death of Bebel — brave old Bebel of the merry eye 
and the impetuous eloquence — he became the foremost 
figure in the most powerful party in Germany, his 
opinions uncompromising, his honesty unquestioned, 
his courage equal to any occasion. He has less spacious- 
ness and imagination than Jaures, whose death is the 
greatest personal calamity that has befallen Europe in 
this war — perhaps less gentleness than dwelt under the 
kindly exterior of old Wilhelm Liebknecht. But he has 
a clear and powerful mind, immense force of character, 
and a gift of scorn. " Have you read Roosevelt's 
articles on Sociahsm ? " he was asked at the end of an 
interview when he was on his visit to America in 1910. 
" My dear sir, I will only discuss opinions worth while 
discussing," was his reply. It will be seen that he has 
taken the measure of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt. The 
courage which enabled him, httle more than a year ago, 
to make in the Reichstag that famous exposure of the 
corruption practised by Krupps — an exposure which 
led to the trial and sentence of high officials — has nov/ 
found a larger field of activity. 

The two Kings of Potsdam will emerge from the war 
in a very different relationship from that of the past. 
The militarism that sustained the despotic rule of the 
Kaiser will be discredited and we hope in ruins. Upon 
its ruins Karl Liebknecht will stand as the most powerful 
democratic figure in Germany. Under his inspiration 
and the inspiration of men like him, it may be, his country 
will be no longer a menace to the world, but a bulwark 
of Liberalism in Western Europe. 



PRESIDENT WILSON 

AND THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

The rupture between President Wilson and Mr. Bryan 
will be one of the great landmarks of the war. What- 
ever other significance the event may have, it is con- 
clusive evidence of the failure of German diplomacy in 
America. The importance of that failure can hardly 
be exaggerated. Behind the struggle of the armies in 
the field there has been another struggle, hardly less 
important, for the sympathy of the neutral world. In 
this secondary theatre, the high hopes with which the 
Kaiser started on his great adventure have been dis- 
appointed. His main expectation, of course, was that 
the swift and overwhelming triumph of his arms would 
stampede the neutral world and bring it to his side, if 
not through sympathy at least through fear and self- 
interest. But he did not rely only on the suasion of 
success. He set in operation also the formidable 
machinery of the most unscrupulous diplomatic system 
extant. 

What has been the result ? There were four main 
spheres of operation — the Balkans, Italy, Scandinavia, 
and the United States. In one sphere alone, Turkey 
and the Balkans, has he succeeded, and he has suc- 
ceeded there for three reasons: the failure of the Allies 
to formulate a clear and decisive appeal to the Balkan 
States, the German influences in the courts, and the 
susceptibility of so complicated a situation to those 

corrupt arts which the Wilhelmstrasse has carried to 

296 



PRESIDENT WILSON 297 

such perfection. But that is his one success. Scandi- 
navia, in spite of its fears of Russia, has stood firm 
against the Kaiser's cajoleries and threats; Italy has 
entered the war on the side of the Allies, and the 
United States has brought his policy of diplomatic 
hectoring and bluff to the challenge of a courteous but 
decisive "No." 

The Kaiser has made many miscalculations about 
nations and about men, but no greater miscalculation 
than that which he has made in regard to President 
Wilson and the United States. He is not alone in that. 
There has been a good deal of ignorance on the same 
subject in this country. In the early stages of the war 
there was a mischievous clamour against the United 
States in a section of the Press which has never quite 
got rid of the idea that America is only a rather rebellious 
member of our own household, to be patronised when 
it does what we want and lectured Hke a disobedient 
child when it doesn't. President Wilson was assumed, 
in these ill-informed quarters, to be a timid, academic 
person, so different from that magnificent tub-thumper, 
Mr. Roosevelt, who would have been at war with 
Mexico in a trice and would, it was believed, have 
plunged into the European struggle with or without 
excuse. 

If there was misunderstanding here on the subject we 
cannot be surprised that the Kaiser blundered so badly. 
He, too, believed in the " schoolmaster " view of Wood- 
row Wilson. A man who had refused such a golden 
opportunity of annexing Mexico must be a timid, 
invertebrate person who had only to be bullied in order 
to do what he was told. Moreover, was there not that 
great German-American population to serve as a whip 
for the Presidential back ? One person in every five 
German born or of German descent, ready to play the 



298 THE WAR LORDS 

game of the Fatherland, ready to ally himself with the 
Irish-Americans in order to bring the whole Govern- 
ment of the country to heel or disaster. And so he 
did not send the polite, the gracious, the supple Prince 
Billow to Washington. That courtly gentleman was 
dispatched to Italy to charm the Italian nation into 
quiescence. For America he needed another style of 
diplomacy, and he sent thither the stout and rather 
stupid Herr Dernberg to let President Wilson and the 
Americans know that Germany was a very rough 
customer and would stand no nonsense. 

It was a fatal blunder — the blunder of a people who 
have been so blinded by materialism that they do not 
seem to have so much as the consciousness that there 
is such a thing as moral strength on earth. No one who 
had followed with intelligent understanding the career 
of Woodrow Wilson could have doubted that he had to 
deal with a man of iron, a man with a moral passion as 
fervid as that of his colleague, Mr. Bryan, but with that 
passion informed by wide knowledge and controlled by 
a masterful will — a quiet, still man who does not live 
with his ear to the ground and his eye on the weathercock, 
who refuses to buy popularity by infinite handshaking 
and robustious speech, but comes out to action from the 
sanctuary of his own thoughts, where principle, and not 
expediency, is his counsellor. Please do not sniff at 
principle. It is one of those old-fashioned things which 
is a little out of favour with our pragmatic young men; 
but the statesman that is without it is as dangerous as 
the mariner who is without a compass. The peril of the 
democracy in all countries, and in this as much as any, 
is that it is so easily fooled by the unscrupulous adven- 
turer whose life is an assertion of the Candidate's Creed — 

" I don't believe in princerple, 
But oh, I du in interest " — 



PRESIDENT WILSON 299 

the sort of gentleman who, with a great gift of demagogic 
speech, Hves on the emotions of the crowd and can only 
be said never to have deserted a principle because he 
never had a principle to desert. 

It is because no man in a conspicuous position in 
the democratic world to-day is so entirely governed by 
principle and by moral sanctions that President Wilson 
is not merely the first citizen of the United States, but 
the first citizen of the world. Mistakes, no doubt, for he 
is human, but they have never been the mistakes of a 
weak man, most certainly they have never been the 
mistakes of a pohtical gambler or of one who has ever 
been touched by the sordid motives of ambition. To 
suppose that such a man, the head of such a country, 
was to be terrorised by " big talk " was the silHest mis- 
reading of his character. Courage, not the courage that 
gambles on the public emotions, but the courage that 
takes its stand on moral grounds, has been the capital 
note of his career. As President of Princeton University 
he had come into pubHc prominence by his determina- 
tion to save that great institution from being the mono- 
poly of wealthy idlers. "Dollars or brains" — that 
was the issue, and he fought for brains. The " dollars " 
won and he resigned; but the millionaires had a costly 
victory. They had saved Princeton for the prince of 
the pork trade, but in the end they found they had 
made its President the head of the nation. 

People, in fact, have always been making the Kaiser's 
mistake about Woodrow Wilson, always assuming that 
he was " only a schoolmaster " and could be used or 
brushed aside as the occasion demanded. And his 
singular simplicity and lack of ostentation strengthen 
the illusion, for there is nothing that so mystifies the 
bully and the rogue as the quality of modesty. He 
cannot understand that a man may be strong without 



300 THE WAR LORDS 

always talking about his muscle. It was the famous duel 
with ex-Senator Smith of New Jersey that revealed Mr. 
Wilson to the larger world. He had resigned his place 
at Princeton, and the great party " boss " who was in 
very bad odour thought it would be a good stroke of 
business to get back to the Senate under the cover of 
Woodrow Wilson's unsullied name. He would get him 
nominated as Governor of New Jersey and later exact 
his own price. But when the nomination came Mr. 
Wilson had a preHminary condition. If he was to stand 
as the Democratic nominee for the Governorship the 
discredited " boss " must not be associated with him 
as Democratic candidate for the Senate. Mr. Smith, 
pulling the strings behind, agreed. He was sure that 
if he could get Mr. Wilson's consent to save the Demo- 
cratic cause, he could break the " schoolmaster " to his 
will when he had got him in harness. There are few 
more dramatic stories of public life than the events that 
followed — Smith puttingup a man of straw for the Senate; 
then, Wilson safely elected, revealing his whole battery 
and demanding the retirement of the man of straw and 
the Senatorship for himself; Wilson denouncing his 
candidature and beating him ignominiously out of the 
field. The years of the Governorship that followed are 
historic. There had never been such a cleansing fire 
in State government, and from that apprenticeship 
Woodrow Wilson emerged with a reputation unlike 
anything else in America and his election to the Presi- 
dency in opposition to Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft was 
a convincing proof of the sound instinct of the American 
people for the man of character. 

As President, his achievements in internal policy 
have been as remarkable for their magnitude as for their 
courage and their wisdom. He has been as conspicuous 
for deeds as President Roosevelt was for words. His 



PRESIDENT WILSON 301 

speeches have the brevity of Lincoln, something of that 
great man's force, still more of the note of Burke. His 
speech in introducing his measure bringing the United 
States within sight of his ideal of Free Trade occupied 
only eight minutes; but the most striking of his utter- 
ances was the noble speech in which, defying the popular 
sentiment, he brought the dispute with this country on 
the Panama Canal to an end. That speech will live 
among the supreme expressions of great statesmanship. 
Throughout the war his attitude has conformed to 
the historic tradition of the United States of non-inter- 
vention in European affairs. This attitude laid him 
open to attack from both sides. He was assailed be- 
cause he did not enter his protest against the atrocities 
in Belgium, and it is at least arguable that he would 
have done well to have initiated a neutral court of 
inquiry. Such a course would not have been a challenge 
directed formally against Germany only, for allegations 
on either side would have been investigated, and, what- 
ever the findings, there would have been a sense that 
the claims of humanity had some authoritative guardian- 
ship. But the chief attack on the policy of President 
Wilson has come from the side of Germany, which has 
realised that the neutrality of the United States has 
meant, in fact, that all its resources are at the disposal 
of the Allies, in virtue of the fact that they have com- 
mand of the sea. To stop the supply of munitions to 
this country has been the chief object of the hectoring 
policy of Germany, which culminated in the crime of 
the Lusitania. President Wilson's Hne has been un- 
yielding. The trade of America is open to all nations, 
and it is not his duty to check that trade in one channel 
because the German navy has failed to keep it open in 
another. That would not be neutrahty: that would be 
intervention in the interests of Germany. 



302 THE WAR LORDS 

It was on this policy that the breach with Mr. Bryan 
came. Mr. Bryan is a wonderful son of the plains, 
primitive, elemental, with a great gift of speech, the 
rehgious fervour of a field preacher, a certain naivete 
that makes him always charming if sometimes a jest, 
and a passion for the undiluted gospel of non-inter- 
vention. That he had been at issue with Mr. Wilson 
had been long known, but the extraordinary personal 
authority of the President held him in check. When 
the hot gospeller of righteousness was beaten by Mr. 
Wilson as the Democratic nominee he fell under the 
sway of his more instructed and more masterful rival, 
who on his election to the Presidency made him his chief 
Minister. Mr. Bryan, who has the m.oral passion of 
John Bright without Bright's intellectual power, bore 
the restraints of office with difficulty and the chief 
business of the President was to bring his starry emotions 
within the orbit of practical politics. He had hitherto 
succeeded and I have reason to know that the " manag- 
ing " of Mr. Bryan wiU make one of the most amusing 
stories in the by-ways of politics. 

Now he has gone out to preach peace on any terms. 
He demands that the Government shall refuse to allow 
the American trader to supply munitions of war, in 
theory, to any one, but, in fact, to the Allies, and also 
the prohibition of the right of American citizens to sail 
in British ships. In short, he repudiates his famous 
declaration on munitions, which he signed but which 
no doubt the President inspired, and stands for the fuU 
acceptance of the German demands. President Wilson 
wiU not buy peace on these ignoble conditions. He is 
as anxious as Mr. Bryan to maintain peace; he is as 
loyal to the traditions of the fathers of the great Republic ; 
but he realises that the world has changed and that 
the United States can no longer be hermetically sealed 



PRESIDENT WILSON 303 

against the external nations. This war is, ultimately, 
a war for the Government of the world. If Germany 
wins, the Kaiser's dream of a universal throne will be 
accomplished, for every nation, and the United States 
among the rest, will Hve under the sanction of the 
Prussian sword. The Monroe doctrine itself is, by a 
strange irony, at stake. It was designed — as the con- 
verse of the policy of non-intervention in European affairs 
— to preserve the Americas from European attack. 
But the victory of Germany would make the Monroe 
doctrine waste paper. The South American republics 
would fall to the Kaiser and the United States would 
no longer be the unchallenged guardian of the peace of 
the Americas, but would have to face the menace of a 
German South America. In a word, the fate of the 
great Republic is in the balance as truly as, though less 
directly than, the fate of Europe. 

It is a mercy for the world, but most a mercy for the 
United States, that in the struggle for the Democratic 
nomination the amiable dreamer was defeated by the 
statesman. What would have happened if Mr. Bryan 
had won we now see. President Wilson understands 
what is at stake. He knows that surrender to the Ger- 
man demands would not only be a humiliation to his 
country beyond all parallel, but that finally it would 
assuredly mean the end of the American democracy 
and all the ideals for which it stands. In refusing to 
yield an inch on the rights of American citizens to work 
for whom they hke and travel how they hke he is defend- 
ing the sacred ark of freedom. He will not go to war 
if war can be avoided with honour; but the integrity 
of the United States is his supreme concern and it is 
safe in his hands. The American people are with him. 
They have been in sympathy with the AUies from the 
beginning and every incident of the war, culminating 



304 THE WAR LORDS 

in the crime of the Lusitania, has deepened that sym- 
pathy. Now even the German-Americans are alarmed. 
They see that they have to make their choice — that they 
cannot be Americans and Germans, that they cannot 
in the final test have two loyalties. The hyphen must 
go. And there is abundant evidence that it is going. 
The victims of the Lusitania did not die in vain, and in 
the end the United States stands with practical unani- 
mity behind the great man whom the Kaiser set out so 
confidently to browbeat into obedience. 





Lord Fisher 



LORD FISHER 

AND THE SPIRIT OF THE NAVY 

There is, I believe, a letter in existence written by Lord 
(then Sir John) Fisher in 1905, which may go down to 
history as one of the most remarkable forecasts on re- 
cord. It contained two prophecies, both of which have 
been fulfilled to the letter. They were these: There 
would be war with Germany in 1914 and Captain JelHcoe 
would be the Admiralissimo. On the face of it, the 
prophecy looks like witchcraft. In fact, it is simply an 
illuminating illustration of the mind and character of 
the remarkable man who revolutionised the British 
Navy, came out of his retirement to control the instru- 
ment that he created, and has now returned to that 
retirement as the result of his conflict with Mr. Churchill. 
If we unravel the meaning of the prophecy we shall have 
gone far to unravel the man himself. 

Let it be observed that the year in which the letter 
was written was 1905. That was the year in which Lord 
Fisher forged his bolt; it was the year of the Dread- 
nought. The creation of that ship was perhaps the 
greatest event in the naval history of the world, and it 
was the occasion of the fiercest controversy that ever 
raged in the British Navy It was the culminating 
challenge of " Radical Jack " to the traditions of the 
service. Fifty years had passed since young Fisher had 
left the Victory in Portsmouth Harbour and boarded 
the Calcutta in Plymouth Sound. (You may see the 
figurehead of the old Calcutta to-day in the grounds of 
his son's house near Thetford in Norfolk.) 

During all that period he had made his way with 

305 u 



3o6 THE WAR LORDS 

extraordinary independence of mind and directness of 
aim through the obstacles that lay in the path of one 
who had no social backing and no conventional arts. 
He respected nothing that was old because it was old, 
and feared nothing that was powerful because it was 
powerful. He was born with the instinct of the revolu- 
tionist, and in any sphere of life would have been the 
centre of upheaval. " The history of the Navy," he 
would say, " is the history of exploded axioms." He 
saw that the wonderful achievements of science since 
the days of Nelson had changed all the essentials of 
naval warfare, and with that fearless pursuit of the 
argument " whithersoe'r it leads," which is his char- 
acteristic, he set himself to the task of reform, reckless 
of personal consequences. 

His natural audacity of mind is accompanied by a 
touch of romance and superstition not uncommon 
among seafaring men. This sentiment centres round 
the name of Nelson. His passion for Nelson is so intense 
and abiding that he seems to dwell in a sort of spiritual 
companionship with that great man, his sayings always 
on his lips, his ideals always in his mind. One of his 
objections to the first unsupported naval attack on 
the Dardanelles was expressed in Nelson's maxim, 
" Never fight a fort." It was of good omen to him that 
he was initiated into the navy by the last of Nelson's 
captains, and that he began his active life on Nelson's 
Victory and finished it on Nelson's Victory, and when 
he became First Sea Lord he deliberately delayed the 
assumption of office till the anniversary of Nelson's death. 

He sees the finger of destiny moving through all the 
affairs of fife, and with uplifted hand and prodigious 
conviction loves to quote : 

" Time, and the ocean, and some fostering star 
In high cabal have made us what we are." 



LORD FISHER 307 

I know nothing of his religious views, and fancy that 
even here he would say, " Ditto to Nelson," but few 
men quote the Bible more frequently or more appositely, 
and his love of sermons is notorious. He sees a divine 
purpose in the events that have made this httle island 
the great adventurer of the earth, peopling its solitary 
places and holding the keys of its gates. " Has it 
occurred to you," he will say, " that there are five keys 
to the world, the Straits of Dover, the Straits of Gib- 
raltar, the Suez Canal, the Cape of Good Hope, the Straits 
of Malacca, and that we hold them all ? " 

This mystical fervour, so far from paralysing action, 
stimulates his mind and gives it momentum and imagina- 
tive sweep. It releases him from the ordinary modes of 
thought and professional ruts, and endows him with the 
quaHty of the discoverer and adventurer into strange 
seas. The opposition to such a man in any walk of 
Hfe is always great. In the Navy, which had grown 
stiff with tradition, the apparition of this volcanic 
person was especially disquieting. He was a menace 
to vested interests and comfortable ways, a challenger 
of everything that was ancient and therefore sacred, 
a violent and original force bursting into the sleepy 
parlours of officialism. It was Lord Ripon who, on 
the Olympus of the Admiralty, first heard rumours of 
" Radical Jack," and, perhaps attracted by the name, 
perhaps by the fact that he had written on the science 
of gunnery, summoned him to Whitehall and made him 
Controller of the Ordnance Department. That was 
the beginning of the trouble for the Mandarins of the 
Navy. Captain Fisher had got his foot in the door, 
and he was not the sort of man to go away because the 
people inside did not want him. Nor was his the sort 
of personality that could ever be under-rated by a 
Government that appreciated energy and originality. 



3o8 THE WAR LORDS 

He returned, it is true, to sea to command the Atlantic 
Fleet, and later the Mediterranean Fleet; but in due 
course he was back again at Whitehall, this time as Second 
Sea Lord. And now the battle between the rebel and 
the old school was seriously begun. Once it seemed that 
the Mandarins had triumphed. Admiral Fisher retired 
from the Board and took his last post in the active 
service as Commander at Portsmouth. Partly he went 
there for the spiritual joy of seeing his own flag float 
over Nelson's ship, partly as a diplomatic retreat, four 
mieux sauter. In any case, he was soon back at the 
Board, but this time on his own terms as First Sea Lord. 
He came with the accumulated demands of a lifetime, 
with a will of iron, with a ruthless disregard of persons 
and interests, with the spirit of a crusader breathing fire 
and slaughter against the old dispensation. Never was 
a comfortable government department swept by such 
a mighty wind. The attack was so impetuous, so shat- 
tering, that the enemy could not mobihse for their 
defence. For the assailant did not believe in attacking 
the foe piecemeal and so giving them time to collect 
their forces. He descended on them in one tumultuous 
and breathless assault. In two or three sensational 
years he had re-created the Navy. He changed the 
strategic disposition of the fleet, scrapped a hundred 
and fifty useless ships and released their men for effec- 
tive service, abolished the infamous waste in warehous- 
ing, reformed the conditions of the men, opened the 
path for talent, gathered around him the men of brains, 
and bustled away the dullards and the social pets, and 
finally brought to birth the all-big-gun ship. 

And that fact brings me back to the prophecy. Why, 
assuming that Sir John Fisher was right in believing that 
war with Germany was coming — and it is the business 
of the head of the Navy to believe that war is coming 



LORD FISHER 309 

somewhere at some time in order to be prepared for it 
should it come — why did he in 1905 predict that it would 
come nine years later ? The reason is not really abstruse 
but it shows the far-seeing character of the man and 
the imaginative quality of his naval pohcy. In those 
exciting years of revolution in Whitehall Sir John 
Fisher, while fighting the ancien regime at home, had 
his eye on another and more dangerous foe abroad. 
Behind the duel at the Admiralty was the greater duel 
with Admiral von Tirpitz. It was the advent of Ger- 
many into the realm of sea power that was the true seed 
of the rivalry between the two countries. Sir John 
Fisher saw that if the challenge to the British Navy 
came anywhere it must come in the North Sea. That 
was why, following the maxim of Nelson — " Your battle 
ground must be your drill ground " — he changed the 
drill ground of the Navy from the Mediterranean to the 
North Sea. That was why he watched every move of 
the creator of the German Navy with such sleepless eyes. 
Most of all he watched the progress of the Kiel Canal, 
which was nearing completion. He saw in that great 
undertaking the keystone of the naval power of Ger- 
many, and he determined to neutrahse it. Perhaps the 
building of the all-big-gun ship was an inevitable conse- 
quence of the developments of science, especially of the 
invention of central fire-control. I do not think that 
Lord Fisher would claim more than that he was the 
first to bring the factors together — to add up the sum of 
things, as it were, and to find that the answer was the 
Dreadnought. But in arriving at that answer he had 
his mind fixed, not only on the creation of a superior 
type of ship, but on the creation of a ship that would 
put the Kiel Canal, as it were, out of action for an in- 
definite period. The Dreadnought, in short, was not 
merely intended to make the German Navy a back- 



310 THE WAR LORDS 

number; much more it was intended to render the Kiel 
Canal practically useless for supreme naval purposes. 
Hence the secrecy and the furious haste with which, the 
opposition in Whitehall being finally overcome, the 
Dreadnought was built and launched on an astonished 
world. It was a trial ship, an experiment, rushed to- 
gether in order to learn how to build an all-big-gun ship ; 
but it hit von Tirpitz between wind and water. For a 
time he was paralysed. If he built pre-Dreadnoughts 
he might find that they were no match for the new type 
of ship ; if he built the new type, Germany would have 
to reconstruct the Kiel Canal in order to give them 
passage. Sir John Fisher, watching the effect of his 
trump card, knew what the result must be — knew that 
there was no answer to the Dreadnought except the 
Dreadnought, knew that von Tirpitz had lost the initia- 
tive until the Kiel Canal could be reconstructed. How 
long would that reconstruction take ? It could not be 
done before 1914. Then Germany could not risk a naval 
war until 1914. 

Nor is the basis of the other prophecy less illuminating. 
The opposition that the revolutionist encountered at 
the Admiralty was not only due to the fact that he was 
no respecter of conventional ways ; it was due even more 
to the fact that he was no respecter of persons. He was 
merciless with the incompetent, no matter how powerful 
their social connections might be, no matter how clear 
their claim to advancement on the ground of routine. 
He applied the doctrine of " Favouritism " — favouritism 
not for persons, but for capacity — with a defiant candour 
that sent a shudder through the service. Whenever he 
saw capacity he seized on it, whenever he saw incapacity 
he brushed it aside. Did those upon whom the swift 
hghtnings of his wrath fall demand a court-martial? 
No. What was a court-martial but a means of getting old 



LORD FISHER 311 

friends to whitewash you and to say that nothing was 
wrong when perhaps they knew that everything was 
wrong ? If a man had shown that he could not be trusted 
there was nothing to do but not to trust him. Personal 
considerations could not be allowed to imperil the 
national safety. Never since the days when Napoleon 
made the sons of innkeepers and coopers Field-Marshals 
of France was there such a clear field for the man of 
original genius. And among the young men of genius 
whom Sir John Fisher had singled out there was none 
of more conspicuous promise than Captain Jellicoe. 
He had discovered him when he himself was Controller 
of Ordnance, and when he returned to the Admiralty 
as First Sea Lord he brought Captain Jellicoe to his old 
department. It was not his "turn"; but what of 
that ? If it was not his " turn " he must be taken out 
of his turn. There was no time to be lost. Nine years 
hence the Kiel Canal would be finished. Nine years 
hence the fate of England might hang upon one man. 
He was satisfied that that man must be JeUicoe. Those 
who in the interval have followed events in the Navy 
closely know how the fulfilment of the prophecy has 
been brought about. Perhaps only the courage of Mr. 
Churchill could have carried through the rapid shufflings 
of men and officers necessary to accomphsh the object. 
It was accomplished at the last moment. As the hour 
struck JeUicoe appeared as the Admiralissimo of the 
Fleet. 

It is not improbable that there was another prophecy 
that Sir John Fisher could have made in 1905 had he 
been probed. He knew that when the war came about 
it would, in spite of his age, be he who would have to 
control the great machine that he had created. The 
call was delayed, but few doubted that it would have to 
come. And, equally, few contrasting the events of the 



312 THE WAR LORDS 

first three months of the war with what happened after 
his return will under-estimate the immense importance 
of his recall upon the course of the war. There had been 
grave mistakes which had led to grave disasters. The 
sinking of the three cruisers by a submarine, the defeat 
off the coast of Chili, the long licence accorded to the 
Emden, the escape of the Goeben, had disturbed the 
public mind. There was no doubt about the instrument 
but there was disquiet about the way in which it was 
being used. Then came Lord Fisher and the release 
of his greyhounds. " What is the use of setting a 
tortoise to catch a hare ? What did the Almighty give 
the greyhound long legs for ? " he said with that whimsi- 
cal fancy in which he loves to dress his thought. Within 
a month the battle of the Falkland Islands had swept 
the German Navy from the seas, and had established 
in the popular mind, as nothing else had done, the over- 
whelming supremacy of the British Fleet. The failure 
of Germany on land had been only relative : her failure 
at sea had been absolute. There had been a disposition 
in the public mind until then to overlook the magnitude 
of that failure. This was very natural. We are im- 
pressed by visible results and ignore the much more 
important invisible results. The achievements of the 
Emden had that dramatic quality which arrests the 
popular mind and had assumed an importance which 
had no relation to realities. They made exciting 
reading in the newspapers, and gave people who do 
not think an easy subject for their fears about the 
Navy. 

And all the time one of the most wonderful things 
in history was happening with hardly a word of comment 
in the Press or of remark from the public. The whole 
mercantile marine of Germany was vanishing from the 
seas. There is to-day on all the waters of the earth not 



LORD FISHER 313 

a trading ship to be seen carrying the German or Austrian 
flag. The shipping industry of Germany is dead. Its 
vessels have either been captured and sold or interned 
in foreign ports, or He useless hulks in the harbours of 
Hamburg and Bremen. Still more wonderful, millions 
of British soldiers have been carried to and fro across 
the English Channel without the loss of a single life. 
The North Sea is almost as inviolate as the Serpentine. 
Ten months have passed and not a German soldier has 
landed on our shores. The spectacular raid to Yarmouth 
and the futile raid on Scarborough and Hartlepool only 
served to show the inability of the German fleet to make 
a real offensive stroke against this country. 

These invisible victories of the Fleet are the realities 
of warfare. They are destroying Germany without a 
shot being flred. " You take my life," said Shylock, 
" when you do take the means whereby I live." And 
it is the means whereby she lives that the British Navy 
is taking from Germany. For an example, take rubber. 
It is an essential in modern warfare and the Navy has 
taken it from her. The price of rubber to-day in London 
is about 2s. a lb.; in Hamburg, I understand, it is i8s. 
Or oil. The Navy has just taken Basra in the Persian 
Gulf from the Turks. The man in the street has not 
remarked the fact. Yet Basra is the port for the 
Persian oilfield. Its capture means that while Germany 
is without external supplies of oil we are assured of an 
abundant supply from the Persian oilfields of which the 
British Government is the principal owner. 

Meanwhile the German Grand Fleet lies idle in its 
harbours. Twice it has stolen out hke a burglar at 
night and fled back with the dawn at the first hint of 
the arrival of the pohceman. Once it was badly mauled 
and since then it has been " silent as a painted ship upon 
a painted ocean." It is not for us to complain if von 



314 THE WAR LORDS 

Tirpitz yields us the fruits of victory without asking us 
for the sacrifices of victory. But it is not difficult to 
conceive the profound disappointment of Germany at 
his failure to challenge our supremacy at sea. The 
German navy was the peculiar pride of the Kaiser. 
As Frederick the Great had taught Prussia to march, 
so the Kaiser's ambition was to teach it to swim. 
And at the end of ten months of war there is not a 
square mile of the high seas where the German Fleet 
has dared to sail free and defiant. 

This is the great, outstanding fact of the struggle. 
The German war machine on land has come to grief, 
but it is still formidable. The German war machine at 
sea is locked up in an ignoble fear. It may be that the 
war came too suddenly for von Tirpitz to carry out his 
strategy. There is reason to believe that the war lords 
forced the pace without regard to the interests of the 
Navy, and that von Tirpitz was sacrificed to the need 
of rushing events on land. It is an interesting matter 
for speculation as to what would have happened if the 
German Admiralissimo, instead of keeping his great fleet 
intact, had distributed a considerable portion of it over 
the oceans of the world before the outbreak of war for 
the purpose of commerce destruction. It would have 
meant of course heavy losses to the German Navy; but 
it could hardly have failed to produce important 
material results and hardly less important moral results. 
It would have been a serious challenge in the eyes of 
the world to our mastery of the seas, it would have 
gravely interfered for a time with our overseas trade, 
and it would certainly have given the Germans a run 
for their money. The ships would have been rounded 
up in the end; but the interruption they would have 
caused to our trade would have been serious, and the 
anxiety felt about the trivial episodes of the Emden 



LORD FISHER 315 

show how severe a blow such an aggressive poHcy would 
have struck at our confidence. 

The timid policy adopted by von Tirpitz, whether 
it was his choice or whether it was thrust on him by 
the rapid movement of events, has been a disastrous 
failure. His fleet is in being — and in hiding — but the 
seas are ours. The policy of " attrition " is wrong for 
the weaker Power. Any chess player will understand 
that. It is the player who has the superiority in " pieces " 
who can best afford to play the game of attrition. 
What has been the result of that game so far ? The 
British Navy has not only had all the fruits of victory, 
but it is to-day in a relatively stronger position than it 
was on the day that war was declared owing to the 
enormously superior power of this country in regard to 
building. We, in a word, both eat the cake and have it. 

But the failure of German tactics, after all, is only a 
tribute to British supremacy. For a dozen years two 
men have been measuring themselves against each 
other at sea and the war has brought their relative 
genius to the test. In all this vast conflict there is only 
one real personal wrestle. It is that between Lord 
Fisher and von Tirpitz. They have watched each other's 
moves for years, the one grimly and studiously, after 
the Prussian manner, the other with sardonic gaiety 
after a manner for which I know no parallel. Von 
Tirpitz has failed, not only because he had the harder 
task, but because he has a heavier, more mechanical 
mind. His evolutions are enclosed by the large sweep 
and range of the other's imagination. Von Tirpitz is 
governed by the thing that is discovered : Fisher is the 
discoverer, the man of free, adventurous mind, the great 
empiric of the sea. He saw that naval thought was 
sterilised by traditions of the past which had no rele- 
vance to new facts and, having no respect for authority, 



3i6 THE WAR LORDS 

he made, as we have seen, a revolution. In that revolu- 
tion von Tirpitz was always panting in his wake — an 
industrious, painstaking man trying to catch the light- 
nings. The two illustrated in a very striking way the 
characteristics of the rival nations, the imaginative 
swiftness of the one, the pedestrian thoroughness of the 
other. In the intellectual contests at the Mermaid 
Tavern it was said that the quick mind of Shakespeare 
played around the ponderous Ben Jonson like an 
English frigate around a Spanish galleon. That analogy 
might be applied to the intellectual relations of England 
and Germany. I remember standing in the museum, 
of engineering at Munich before a Bessemer plant. 
" There," said the German who was showing me round, 
" there is one of the inventions we owe to you. Your 
people have the imagination to discover; but we have 
the patience to perfect and apply." In the contest 
between Lord Fisher and von Tirpitz, the Englishman 
not only had the superior imagination but at least an 
equal quality of industrious application of means to 
ends. That deadly blow at the Kiel Canal which he 
struck by inventing the Dreadnought did not end with 
the complete dislocation of von Tirpitz's plans. Its 
effects went deeper than that. They permanently 
lowered the quality of the German competition in ship- 
building. For a year von Tirpitz, paralysed by the new 
turn of events, stopped all big-ship construction, and 
when in feverish haste he laid down eight Dreadnoughts 
he laid them down from plans for which Germany had 
paid a great sum, but which Lord Fisher would doubtless 
have been glad to give to von Tirpitz for nothing, for 
they were already obsolete. 

It was this break with the past, carried out so swiftly 
and silently, that gave the British Navy such an over- 
whelming advantage, not so much in the number of 



LORD FISHER 317 

Dreadnoughts as in their quahty, for while Germany 
was laying down large numbers of ships on an inferior 
model, we were able to correct the discovered defects 
of each ship in its successor. 

As to the wisdom of the change, there was no doubt 
after the battle off the Falkland Islands. The great 
principles which Lord Fisher appUed in the Dreadnought 
were the uniformity of caUbre in the guns, and the union 
of striking power and high speed. The latter principle 
has been perhaps the most important of his many 
contributions to the philosophy of naval warfare. In 
the old days the cruiser was the vision of the Navy, but 
not its striking power. The battleship had power but 
not speed. Lord Fisher saw that to unite the two 
elements in one ship would much more than double its 
value, and I think I am reveahng no secret in saying 
that he himself would have built nothing but Dread- 
nought cruisers. But he had to yield something to the 
powerful opponents who stood for the old traditions 
and warred against the ravages of his formidable broom. 
And so we had the Dreadnought battleship, the single 
calibre ship with an inferior speed but heavier armour, 
and the Dreadnought cruiser, the single cahbre ship with 
the maximum speed. It will be found, I think, that the 
battle off the Falkland Islands bears testimony to the 
wisdom of the battle cruiser which can not only throw 
the heaviest projectile the farthest distance but has the 
speed of the greyhound. It wiU show also, I thmk, 
the far-seeing strategy which came back to the Admiralty 
when Lord Fisher resumed the control of the great 
instrument that he forged during the sensational years 
when he was First Sea Lord. 

There was one man, we may be sure, who saw the 
announcement of Lord Fisher's return to the Admiralty 
with a sad heart and, later, the news of his retirement 



3i8 THE WAR LORDS 

with satisfaction. It was Admiral von Tirpitz. Per- 
haps it ought to have been apparent from the beginning 
that the Admiralty could not accommodate two such 
masterful personalities as Mr. Churchill and Lord Fisher. 
Neither of them has the gift of subordinating himself, 
and though in time of peace it might be possible for them 
to observe the true limits of their authority, there was 
Httle likelihood of that being the case in time of war, 
when the political and strategic motives were inevitably 
complicated. The collision came with the proposal to 
attack the Dardanelles. Here the political and military 
motives were brought into sharp conflict. The value 
of a successful attack on the Dardanelles and the fall 
of Constantinople was obvious. It would have far- 
reaching influence in the Balkans, it would release the 
commerce of the Black Sea, it would greatly strengthen 
the arm of Russia and its moral effect on Germany would 
be incalculable. On the other hand, of course, its failure 
would be a disaster to the Allies of the gravest character. 
Lord Fisher and Mr. Churchill approached the problem 
from entirely opposite convictions. The one would 
have no political complications with the operations of 
the Navy. Germany was to be beaten in the North Sea 
or nowhere, and any weakening of power in the supreme 
theatre of action was inadmissible on any political 
calculation. In any case an unsupported naval attack 
on the Dardanelles was impracticable. To be effective 
the way must be cleared by land operations. The 
objections were over-ruled. Mr. Churchill, with whom 
Mr. Balfour as a member of the War Council was work- 
ing at the Admiralty, carried the decision. No doubt 
his case was strengthened by the confident assurance 
that Greece would join the Allies and render valuable 
aid in the attack. But at the critical moment M. Veni- 
zelos fell, and the adventure was launched on a purely 



LORD FISHER 319 

naval basis. The result was disaster. The defences 
of the Dardanelles were found to be impenetrable by 
sea, and the disaster of March i8th ended the first phase 
of the operations. 

But the attack once begun could not be abandoned 
without serious political consequences, and the second 
phase was entered on on a dual basis, the initiative being 
taken by land and the Navy only acting as support. 
The difference at the Admiralty, however, was not 
removed, and it reappeared in an aggravated form in 
relation to the use of the Navy in the Straits. Finally, 
Lord Fisher tendered his resignation. The incident 
coincided with the " shell " episode, and Mr. Asquith 
resolved on the reconstruction of the Cabinet. The 
original conception of the new Ministry left Mr. Churchill 
unprovided with office and placed Mr. Balfour at the 
Admiralty; but in a few hours, through the intervention 
of Mr. Balfour himself, room was made for the return of 
Mr. ChurchiU as Chancellor of the Duchy. Lord Fisher, 
however, insisted on the ehmination of Mr. Churchill as 
the condition of the withdrawal of his resignation, and 
as that condition was not fulfilled he disappeared. Mr. 
Churchill had won. Lord Fisher had gone, and the only 
change in the poHtical control of the Navy was that 
instead of Mr. Churchill being at the Admiralty with 
Mr. Balfour as his assistant, Mr. Balfour was at the 
Admiralty with Mr. Churchill as a colleague in the 
cabinet. There had been a shuffle of places, but 
nothing more. 

It was an unhappy close to the most remarkable naval 
career since Nelson fell at Trafalgar. But the work 
Lord Fisher had done remained and though the instru- 
ment on which the security of the country depended 
had passed out of his hand it was still the instrument 
of his creation. 




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